ANNUAL REVIEW ARTICLE 2008 Addressing the Legitimacy Gap in the Israeli Corporatist Revival Guy Mundlak Abstract Since the mid-1980s, Israel’s labour law and industrial relations have transi- tioned from a Continental corporatist system to an Anglo-American pluralist system. The process has been characterized by greater fragmentation of the labour market and the system of interests’ representation. However, in recent years, there have been several episodes of nationwide collective agreements and social pacts. These agreements resonate with a second generation of social corporatist bargaining that has been identified in some European countries. In this article, I question the legitimacy of the new agreements. The legitimacy gap evolves from the use of corporatist instruments against the backdrop of a pluralist system. I discuss the attempts to increase the legitimacy of the corpo- ratist instruments, pointing to their limited success. Future attempts must con- sider solutions that track the hybrid nature of the industrial relations system and devise institutions that bring together the traditional corporatist social partners and the new pluralist agents. Of particular importance is the need to consider the role of the new associations in civil society that voice the interests of the growing segment of disadvantaged workers in the secondary labour market. 1. Introduction The study of industrial relations and labour law in Israel has documented a significant change in the nature of the system, from the corporatist past to the present pluralist model (Mundlak 2007). As opposed to many classical studies of corporatism, which cluster industrial relations regimes, award scores to corporatism and then measure various outcomes, such as inflation, inequality, growth and level of industrial action (cf. Visser 2007), the advan- tage of a single-case study is that it allows for ambiguities, enables studies of causation and accommodates a demonstration of institutional embeddedness and path determinacy. In the Israeli context, the simple story of a transition Guy Mundlak is at the Faculty of Law and Department of Labour Studies, Tel-Aviv University. British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00754.x 47:4 December 2009 0007–1080 pp. 765–787 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.