ABSTRACT
Israeli politics is unusual in that the politicians who came to Israel after reaching political maturity abroad have succeeded in retaining their places in the political elite until old age (in some cases — advanced old age), while the younger generation of native-born Israelis have been unable to take up the reins of power clutched firmly in their elders’ grasp. Political elites in other democratic countries are generally characterized by a far greater heterogeneity of age and a more frequent changing of the guard. My paper is an attempt to explain this unusual phenomenon in Israeli politics on the basis of generation units and intergenerational relations.
