One of the main discussions in recent literature regarding the nature of political parties pertains to the idea of party's decline versus party's adaptation when it comes to their role as a mediator between the voters and the political process of decision making. This question is even more important nowadays due to the increased personalization of politics. Personalization can be an indication of party decline- voters identify with individual representatives and not with the parties as an ideological base. On the other hand, it can be an indication of party adaptation, if the party's representatives are using the personal connection with the voters in order to strengthen their party.
This research aims to identify and analyze which one of those options personalization serves. In order to do so, we took Israel as an extreme case study, due to its high levels of personalization, as previous researches indicated (Rahat and Zamir,2017; Rahat and Shefer, 2007). We focus on the parties' representatives in the parliamentary arena. At the first stage of our research, we examined the scope of personalization that can be found in the Israeli parliament, by examining the usage patterns of individual and collective parliamentary tools throughout time. At the second stage, in order to understand their effect on the party faction, an in-depth examination of the legislators' performance was conducted, focusing on four parameters: faction presence in votes of no confidence, faction's support on private bills suggested by its members, party cohesion in voting, and linguistic analysis of speeches carried out in the plenum. By doing so we will be able to tell whether Israeli legislators work in a collective way in order to maximize their parties' power, (the party adapts by using personalization) or whether they work individually to maximize their own power (an indication of party decline).
