Coalition Building in Ethnically Polarized States: The Evolution of Arab-Jewish Alliances in Israeli Municipal Elections

As part of the field research for my master's thesis in Comparative Politics, I will be traveling to Israel this summer with a fellowship from Hebrew University. My research involves tracing the formation of cross-group alliances between Arab and Jewish political parties in municipal elections.I am interested in the institutional and external factors that cause these alliances to form, even when they are seemingly contrary to in-group interests. Practically, I will be conducting archival work in two selected municipalities, as well as qualitative data collection involving interviews and focus group discussions leading up to the election period in the fall.