Fragmentation of Political Authority and Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship: Explaining Instances of Minority Accommodation in Israel and Estonia

• Author: Olga Talal
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221115175
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(5) 625–654

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221115175

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Fragmentation of

Political Authority and

Bureaucratic

Entrepreneurship:

Explaining Instances of

Minority Accommodation

in Israel and Estonia

Olga Talal

1



Abstract

Why do some ethnic nation-states committed to preferential treatment of the

dominant nation choose to accommodate their ethnic minorities in some

realms? I argue that power struggles between elected and non-elected off‌icials

account for the variation in the treatment of ethnic minorities. Fragmentation

of authority creates opportunities for entrepreneurial bureaucrats to initiate

policy changes and lead to unanticipated outcomes. Drawing on nationalism

studies in comparative politics and principal-agent scholarship in public ad-

ministration, this article outlines a theoretical framework focused on do-

mestic factors accounting for variation in state policies toward minorities in a

novel way. I apply this framework to education policy in Israel and Estonia vis-

`

a-vis the Palestinian Arab and Russian-speaking minorities. This article illu-

minates an empirical puzzle of minority accommodation under nationalist

governments and explains the conditions under which it occurs, offering

generalizable theoretical expectations for similar contexts.

1

Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Olga Talal, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada.

Email: olga.talal@queensu.ca

Keywords

political authority, public goods provision, politics of ethnicity, education

policy, bureaucratic entrepreneurship, Israel, Estonia

Introduction

Nationalizing states are def‌ined as states of and for a particular nation, but at

the same time as weak, unrealized, and insuff‌iciently national in some sense

(Brubaker, 1996). The elites that capture the nationalizing state use its ap-

paratus and laws to address these perceived weaknesses to strengthen the

status and rights of the dominant nation. This takes place in a context of

ethnically heterogenous states, in which the ethnic minorities are excluded

from the sociological boundaries of the state-owning nation def‌ined in ex-

clusive ethnic, cultural, or other terms. Discursive framing of these minorities

as threatening to the survival of the dominant nation is used by governing

elites to justify protectionist state policies.

Israel and Estonia are textbook examples of nationalizing states where

state-owning majorities utilize the state apparatus and its laws to maintain their

dominant status over the Palestinian Arab and Russian-speaking minorities,

respectively. The State of Israel embedded Jewish ethnonational markers

within the state def‌inition, state symbols, and off‌icial ideology (Ghanem,

2001;Haklai, 2011;Peleg & Waxman, 2011). As a state of and for Jews

(Kimmerling & Migdal, 2003), the Jewish population is the state-owning

nation. The Palestinian Arab minority, comprising 21% of the population

(Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2019), is excluded from the Jewish na-

tion’s ethnocultural boundaries and is marginalized by the state (Haklai,

2011).

Following its independence, the Republic of Estonia adopted an off‌icial

discourse declaring ethnic Estonians as the legitimate owners of the state and

the source of its sovereignty. The Estonian state became vested with the

responsibility of protecting the Estonian nation in its putative homeland

(Smith, 1996). The institutionalization of a dominant position of ethnic

Estonians over the state led to rapid marginalization and exclusion of the

Russian-speaking minority, which constituted about 30% of the population

(Brubaker, 1996;Laitin, 1998;Schulze, 2010).

Alongside the ethnonationalist discursive frames and policies of exclusion,

Israel and Estonia have also advanced some measures for minority accom-

modation. This is evidenced by the adoption of a dedicated state program for

aff‌irmative action in Israel and the preservation of the minority-language

public education system in Estonia. Crucially for this paper, both instances of

minority accommodation were adopted under nationalist governments

committed to exclusionary ethnonationalist discourse on minority rights.

626 Comparative Political Studies 56(5)