ABSTRACT
One of the far-reaching consequences of globalization in Israel is the Americanization of its political culture. This means, first, that certain features of political life that not so long ago were identified as typically American are becoming the common way of doing politics or of thinking and talking about politics in Israel (like in many other countries). More substantially this means, second, that politics is in some sense depoliticized. By this is meant that public rational deliberation and selection among alternative programs are displaced by political practices that are less rational and that reduce alternative choices (if not, in some sense, utterly obviate them). By the Americanization of politics we thus mean, in Jürgen Habermas's terms, the decline of the (genuine) democratic public sphere—yet within the framework of (formally) democratic institutions (Habermas 1989).
