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Israeli politics: the headline tells the tale — 17 Comments

  1. It’s worse: imagine four elections in a year for the *same* candidates. Ugh.

  2. That they have a parliamentary system is not the problem per se. Their problems are as follows:

    1. A great many cross cutting cleavages in their population, which promotes a fragmented party system.

    2. A considerable bloc of votes go to Arab parties, who are deadweight protest parties unsuitable for seats in the cabinet.

    3. Difficulties in general in building majority governments given the degree of antagonism between Israel’s major blocs.

    4. The use of national list PR, which also promotes fragmentation. A sensible replacement might be single-member constituencies conjoined to ordinal balloting.

    5. Organic law which permits the use of impromptu elections to resolve a political impasse.

    6. A weak presidency, and the lack of a franchise to substitute a crown ministry for a parliamentary one in case of impasse.

    One problem has been Avigdor Lieberman’s outfit. Lieberman has been blackmailing Likud in an effort to force Bibi’s retirement. With an electoral system which promotes aggregation among adjacent interests and strands of opinion, it’s a passable wager Lieberman’s party would be inconsequential.

  3. If the Senate had five competing parties, the US would have exactly the same problem.

    The Knesset reflects Israel’s underlying factionalism, not the other way round. A strong president might help, but generally would just be fighting the house.

    To get round that reverse problem the French made the president all powerful. Which then makes the whole country depend on the ability of one person.

  4. To get round that reverse problem the French made the president all powerful. Which then makes the whole country depend on the ability of one person.

    They didn’t. They did give the president more discretion in the Constitution of 1958 than had been found in that of 1946 or 1875. France retains a parliamentary order, and when the President and the lower house of the legislature are controlled by different coalitions, the country reverts to explicit parliamentary government, with the prime minister the man in charge.

    The electoral system was modified to incorporate single member constituencies conjoined to two rounds of voting. This promoted aggregation and more disciplined political parties. There were also some modifications in legislative process which streamlined the assemblage of a budget each year and granted more legislative initiative to the ministry.

    What we actually might benefit from in this country would be amendments promoting streamlined procedures and simpler electoral contests. (1) end the presidential veto over legislation. (2) vastly reduce the quantum of presidential appointments which require advice and consent, and distribute much of that function to state legislatures and the like. (3) have one senator from each state, to be elected by the state’s house delegation, with the state governor presiding and breaking ties. (4) assign the senate the function of holding oversight hearing and vetting and recomposing proposed administrative regulations, leaving the remaining legislative functions to the House to exercise exclusively; (5) have the state legislatures elect the President (6) have members of Congress serve four year terms, but incorporate into the eligibility to serve rotation-in-office requirements (say, no one runs if he will come to a point in his tenure where he has served for 14 of the last 16 years), minimum age to run (say, 39) and a maximum age (say, 72).

  5. The US system is the best least bad of all democratic systems, altho a huge part of the system is the unwritten, and unofficial “2-party” system. Many Libertarians and Greens believe a Proportional Representation system (PR) like in Israel or Slovakia, would be better. They are wrong.

    Art D – all PR systems reflect cleavages in the voters (1) which make them more representative for less popular views, but also more unstable. Israel should probably increase the 3% threshold to 4 or 5% (like SK at 5%).
    Many countries have some anti-country group, tho the anti-Zionist Israeli Arabs are the largest of the ethnic “country-haters”, which are indeed deadweight losses for democratic purposes (2).
    All democracies have problems in building a majority – fewer parties, and fewer party decision makers, makes it easier. Israel’s PR problems are similar to Slovakia’s and Austria’s and many PR systems (3).
    Part of the point of most PR systems to reduce the single constituency “representative of the district” problem – since such reps are historically easy to “buy off” thru local pork. Often seen in US politics as well. (4)
    Without a gov’t from the last elections, or if there is a break in the gov’t when a coalition partner disagrees, an “early election” must be called to see what the voters think, now. Because the Prime Minister is the highest executive, chosen by the Parliament (chosen by the people), whenever a coalition breaks down the Prime Minister loses the support of the parliament, so it’s almost required to have a new election. (Minority governments are seldom illegal/ unconstitutional, but they’re almost always ineffective on the important issues.) (5)
    The “weak presidency” is deliberate, because the Pres. is supposed to represent ALL of the country, those who won the election plus those who lost. And in the meantime, the gov’t has to pass laws/ govern, and needs a majority in Parliament to pass laws, unless some opposition (out of gov’t) party agrees to vote for particular laws. Which is somewhat common.(6)

    All PR systems suffer from the strong popularity of some 3-20% popular candidate (7; after 6). Israels’ Lieberman is such a candidate; Slovakia has both Koteleba and Danko (a nationalist); France has LePen; the Germans have the AfD leader.

    Today in Slovakia, the Christian Democrats (KDH) had a press conference. They noted that the current gov’t has adopted many of the ideas and policies from the 210 page, detailed program that KDH put out in June of last year. KDH failed to reach the 5% limit, again, so have no representatives in gov’t. The current gov’t had a very simple, 1 page – 11 question “program” (not even answers), and got a large 25% plurality (winning) to lead the new gov’t.

    Not quite sour grapes – on our (lovely green quiet!) forest walk today (with masks when visible to others), my wife and I talked again about how most Christians want the gov’t to do the good things. They don’t need to be the people “doing” the good things that get done. So the gov’t copying the good Christian Dem program, and doing good things, is pretty good. Rather than criticize the gov’t over small problems, better to highlight how many Christian Dem mayors and local leaders are doing good things. (Wife could easily have become Minister of Health, she’s a Med Doctor, Phd, and Full Professor.)

    None of the press showed up — not being in Parliament means your ideas aren’t media worthy. Even it they become the gov’t program later…

    A “two party” system would have been better for Slovakia.

  6. The US system is the best least bad of all democratic systems,

    Fine. Tell me which European legislatures have been unable to assemble a budget more often than not in the years since 1980.

    Israel should probably increase the 3% threshold to 4 or 5% (like SK at 5%).

    They’ve done that. It’s had ambiguous effects. See Donald Horowitz on vote pooling as a means of reducing the intensity of cleavages in the political sphere. The conduit to vote pooling, per Horowitz, is the ‘alternate vote’, i.e. ordinal balloting within a single-member district system.

    The “weak presidency” is deliberate, because the Pres. is supposed to represent ALL of the country, those who won the election plus those who lost. And in the meantime, the gov’t has to pass laws/ govern, and needs a majority in Parliament to pass laws, unless some opposition (out of gov’t) party agrees to vote for particular laws. Which is somewhat common.(6)

    Waal, there are drawbacks to having a ceremonial presidency. Not every parliamentary system favors the ceremonial presidency. Finland, Poland, France, Portugal, and most of the Balkan states are among those that elected to allocate discretion to the Presidency.

    The government does not need to pass any laws. IT NEEDS TO PASS A BUDGET along with the year’s schedule of tax rates and a public sector borrowing authorization. If the legislature is too refractory to do that, there need to be fail safes in the constitution which would allow the ministry to impose a budget derived from the previous year’s fiscal plans (with some adjustments).

  7. A “two party” system would have been better for Slovakia.

    You live there, I don’t. No clue. I find our strict two-party system over here a fantastic disappointment.

    I tend to think two sides with political parties on each side accustomed to cooperating might do just as well.

  8. The Knesset reflects Israel’s underlying factionalism, not the other way round. A strong president might help, but generally would just be fighting the house.

    Electoral systems are better or worse adapted to a country’s social and cultural circumstances. France found after 1958 that abandoning PR had a tonic effect on the country’s political practice and promoted aggregation and discipline among the country’s fractious array of parties. What Israel might benefit from would be institutions that contain and channel that factionalism.

  9. “Another reason I’m glad we don’t have a parliamentary system. “

    You are so right!

    In Italy the government is run by the leftist party, which lost the election but was able to come back from the rear door, supported by the European Union, the President and influential powers.
    It’s a scandal and a travesty of democracy.
    Everybody knows that they will be massacred in the next elections, which therefore will be delayed as much as (im)possible.
    In the meantime, they are trying to impose new laws to the effect that only “approved professionals” can provide news and opinions – all others have to be censored.

  10. Tom Grey on April 20, 2020 at 5:50 pm said:
    The US system is the best least bad of all democratic systems, altho a huge part of the system is the unwritten, and unofficial “2-party” system.
    * * *
    “..democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms..” -Churchill*

    I am sometimes amazed that we did develop a robust unofficial two-party system, as opposed a parliamentary form, since the Constitution is silent on the subject of electoral factions.
    It is due, perhaps, to the the initial lengthy period with a relatively small number of active, well-known politicians at the national level, and the big controversy at the beginning between two very distinct factions, which set a pattern or habit of two opposing parties.**

    It’s robustness may be fading however. It’s decadence on the Democrat side is certainly manifest in the successive nominations of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

    All the ideological clashes and power squabbles of a proportional representation system takes place inside rather than outside of the parties, but we may be approaching a splintering in the two official unofficial parties to rival the nucleic recombinations of the 1860s.

    * https://richardlangworth.com/democracy

    ** http://www.government-and-constitution.org/history-us-political-parties/timeline-us-political-parties.htm

    The Federalists

    John Adams is elected president for the Federalist Party who believed that the new central government, and the well-educated, wealthy classes, should be given the greatest power of government.

    The Anti-Federalists aka Republicans aka Democratic-Republicans (Jeffersonian Republicans) aka National Republican Party.

    Adams and the Federalist party were opposed by the Anti-Federalist Party who believed that the vast majority of ordinary, less educated people, had the skills and common sense required to run the government. …
    The Anti-Federalist party was re-named as the Republican Party reflecting the ideals of Republicanism supporting states’ rights and a strict interpretation of the Constitution…The Democratic-Republican Party adhered to the Constitution in order to limit the powers of the federal government and was strongly opposed to aristocracy, monarchy, corruption and elitism…

    After the War of 1812, the Federalist Party ceased to exist (having been discredited by their opposition to Madison), and the D-Rs were the only national party until after JQ Adams’ presidency, when there was a schism between the northern faction, which took the name Republican, and the southern faction which took the name Democrat.

    …the Democratic party… was formed when the Democratic-Republicans split into two political parties during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. The first splinter group of Democratic-Republicans was led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, and adopted the name National Republican Party, which would later evolve into the Whigs. The second faction of Democratic-Republicans was organized by Martin Van Buren and led by Andrew Jackson. In 1828 the Andrew Jackson’s Democratic-Republican supporters dropped the word “Republican” from their name and simply called themselves Democrats – the Democratic Party we know today.

    It’s a lot messier after that, what with Whigs and Free Soil and all.
    Although we call Lincoln a Republican, he was not one, technically speaking, but headed the National Union Party, which changed its name after Andrew Johnson’s tenure; Grant was the real first Republican president of the present-day party, which looks like a mash-up of the old Federalists and anti-Federalists.

    The Free Soil Party and the National Union Party was the forerunner to the Republican Party and was formed to further the beliefs of national interest above sectional interests and states’ rights. The National Union Party was organized in 1854 in opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected as its first leader and following his death in 1865, Andrew Johnson became the only other National Union President. The ‘National Union Party’ then changed its name to the Republican Party.

    The Democratic Party then split into two groups due to the issue of slavery. The two Democratic Party factions were the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats. The 1860 national convention proved to be the breaking point for the split. …After the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Democratic Party saw the rise of a faction in the south that became known as the Fire-Eaters. … group of extremist pro-slavery politicians from the South who urged the separation of southern states into a new nation, which became known as the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy. …
    The Secession of the South resulted in the establishment of the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy was formed in February, 1861 and was composed of the 11 Southern states that seceded from the United States in order to preserve states’ rights and slavery. …
    During the Civil War many Democratic Party members were openly sympathetic toward the South and the Confederacy. …
    Northern Democrats divided into two factions, the War Democrats, who supported the military policies of President Lincoln, and the Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. …After secession, the Democratic vote split between the War Democrats and the Peace Democrats. The War Democrats voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

    In the post civil war years the Republicans attempted, with some success, to brand the Democratic Party as the party of rebellion. The Southern leaders of the Democratic Party associated the defeat of the South and Reconstruction with the Republican party. The South became solidly Democratic in response to the unpopular Reconstruction policies of the Republicans. …The South voted Democratic, with few exceptions … from 1877 which was the end of Reconstruction right up to 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

    After the Civil War, the Democrats’ ideology seemed to fluctuate a lot, preserving mostly its animosity to the Republicans, until settling down into the quasi-socialist party of today. (That’s not in the article, but it’s written for kids.)

    We seem to be, for the moment, back to the Federalists (Socialists, Democrats, and RINOs) and the anti-Federalists (Tea Party Republicans), with a lot of people hanging out in the wrong official unofficial party.

  11. Via PowerLine, but I wonder if Bibi really intends to retire as promised in 18 months. Maybe he is looking forward to having someone else take all the flak for doing what needs to be done. He did make sure to put in an “insurance policy” regarding the various legal actions against him.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-gantz-reach-agreement-to-form-national-emergency-government/

    Netanyahu spoke with all the leaders of his right-wing religious bloc of parties after signing the unity deal, his spokesman said in a statement.

    “The prime minister said that the establishment of a unity government in the face of the coronavirus pandemic is a national imperative,” the statement said. “The prime minister pledged that he will continue to uphold the principles of the national camp and the right-wing bloc within the unity government.”

    The deal is expected to be signed formally after Independence Day next week, after which the other right-wing parties would sign on to it. The emerging coalition is then expected to move forward with legislation to cement the premiership rotation agreement that will see Gantz take over from Netanyahu as prime minister after 18 months.

    The final agreement dovetails with most of Netanyahu’s demands, including on the the annexation of parts of the West Bank, a process that it says can begin in July 2020.

    Besides Likud’s demands concerning the Judicial Appointments Committee, another key issue was Netanyahu’s concern that the High Court may rule that he cannot serve as prime minister due to the criminal charges against him, a development that could theoretically leave Gantz as premier for the entire term of the joint coalition.

    Netanyahu had therefore been trying to engineer some kind of legislative guarantee that Gantz would not take over as prime minister in the event of such a court ruling. According to the agreement, there will be no such legislation in the first six months of the coalition’s lifespan, when such a ruling would be most likely to be issued; instead, if Netanyahu is disqualified, new elections would be called.

  12. “Proportional representation” is not representation at all.

    As a transplanted American the first reform i would make here in Israel is to replace the proportional system with electoral districts.

    Proportional systems allow politicians to go down to party headquarters, start lickin and kissin, and build decades-long careers without any responsibility to actual voters. This is not “representative democracy”.

    The most glaring example of this here in Israel was the passage of the Oslo accords – by a single vote, cast by a Likud politician who thumbed his nose at his party’s rank and file, and received a sinecure appointment and a Mercedes. No consequences.

    When I can “call my congressman/ring up my MP” politicians know that drifting too far from their constituents’ opinions – the “representative” part of democracy – will end their careers. There is some counterbalance to the unholy alliance of political parties and the Deep State.

  13. I am sometimes amazed that we did develop a robust unofficial two-party system, as opposed a parliamentary form, since the Constitution is silent on the subject of electoral factions.

    There isn’t any provision for parliamentary government in the document, so have no clue how we were supposed to ‘develop’ that. One reason it had no such provision is that neither political parties in the proper sense of the term nor cabinet responsibility were to be found in Britain or anywhere else at the time. You had parliamentary factions, but corporate bodies conjoining a parliamentary caucus with local membership organizations with affiliated institutions like trade unions came into being only around 1865. The King had after 1720 delegated a great deal of authority to the First Lord of the Treasury, but ‘prime minister’ was prior to 1902 an informal term and it wasn’t until the ministries of Pitt the Younger (1784-1806) that cabinets were effectively accountable to parliament.

  14. Proportional systems allow politicians to go down to party headquarters, start lickin and kissin, and build decades-long careers without any responsibility to actual voters. This is not “representative democracy”.

    Political parties so organized that hq bosses can impose candidates on local constituency parties (see how the Emmanuel Macron’s outfit picked candidates for the French legislature) have that feature too. Your problem is national list PR. As an alternative, you could apportion the Knesset between your seven districts, then have 1-5 constituencies to a district and elect short slates from each. The slates would be chosen by local conventions of party members. With short slates, you could adopt ordinal balloting with Hare system tabulation. The short slates would tend to promote aggregation because you have to have sufficient support to win one of a half-dozen or so seats, not 120 seats. The use of single transferable vote (favored in Australia and Ireland) would allow voters to rank their preferences among a given party’s slate of candidates.

  15. ArtD – Slovakia today has a national list PR, which replaced the system with 4 districts because one popular authoritarian pushed it so as to be leader of the national list. Slovakia is now split into 8 Kraj (“Provinces”? “Counties”?), so the Christian Dems suggested having 8 short slates. Another party suggests going back to 4 districts. Such ideas are on hold during the virus.

    After the 2016 elections, KDH changed rules to stop politicians from getting in and staying in the same spot for more than 3 times. One popular KDH politician changed parties and got in from the other party. But it’s a real issue.

    When voting for a slate, a voter can circle up to 4 choices they like. This is a good idea.

  16. “One reason it had no such provision is that neither political parties in the proper sense of the term nor cabinet responsibility were to be found in Britain or anywhere else at the time.” — Art Deco
    Thanks – you filled in a blank for me, as I knew Britain had a parliament, but not how the PMs were chosen.

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