The first thing to know about Israel’s electoral system is that it has a serious flaw. The second is that it’s very hard to fix it.
As you probably know, Israelis vote for parties, not for individual candidates for the Knesset. The parties pick ordered lists of candidates (how they do this is up to the parties), and each party gets a number of seats in the Knesset in proportion to the number of votes they get. The seats are given in order, so if a party gets 1/3 of the total vote, the first 40 candidates on its list get seats. Then the President of the state will consult with the various parties and pick the member of the Knesset that he believes is the most likely to succeed in forming a government, usually – but not necessarily – the no. 1 member of the party that has the most seats. Of course no party ever gets a true majority, so after the election come the coalition negotiations.
In April’s election, the constellation of “right-wing” parties, led by Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud, came out far ahead of the “center-left,” led by Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party (actually, it’s hard to call it a party – it’s more like a conglomeration of personalities with differing political viewpoints who agree on one major principle: opposing Netanyahu).
Although the Likud by itself achieved only a small margin over Blue and White, Netanyahu’s big advantage was that he had – or at least thought he had – enough coalition partners to put together a majority in the 120-member Knesset. Gantz was far behind, and would not get 61 members in a coalition even if he were to ask the non-Zionist Arab parties to join him, something which hasn’t happened in Israel’s history.
Coalition negotiations are notoriously ugly, with small parties trying to extort the maximum number of important cabinet positions, promises to support or kill particular legislation, or money for pet projects or specific segments of the population, before they agree to sign onto the coalition. But usually everyone wants to get on with it, and compromises are made before time runs out.
This time, one of Bibi’s partners, Avigdor Lieberman, whose Israel Beitenu party is made up mostly of secular Russian immigrants and which had won five seats in the Knesset, insisted that he would not join unless the government passed a law that Lieberman had initiated when he was Defense Minister. The law called for an increasing number of yeshiva students to be drafted, and applied financial penalties to yeshivot that didn’t meet the targets. The Haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) parties would not agree, although they were willing to discuss a compromise. But Lieberman insisted: the law must be passed “without changing a comma.” Lieberman’s five seats made the difference between a 65 seat majority and the inability to form a government (you can read more of the back story about this issue here).
Everyone believed that a last minute compromise would be made, or that Bibi would persuade an opposition member to jump to his party, or pull some other rabbit out of his hat. But it didn’t happen. Bibi’s options were to tell the President of the state, Reuven Rivlin, that he could not form a coalition, in which case Rivlin could ask Gantz or any other member of the Knesset to try, or to get the Knesset to pass a bill to dissolve itself and call new elections. Whether anyone else could have succeeded was uncertain, but rather than take the chance, he chose new elections. They will be held in September.
Until then, Bibi will remain PM. The Knesset will not introduce any new bills. Soon the campaign will start all over again. It’s been estimated that the election will cost the Treasury 475 million shekels ($131 million), and the obligatory day off for all workers will cost the country as much as a billion shekels. The lack of a government capable of making serious commitments will mean that Trump’s “deal of the century” – at least, the political part of it – will be put off until after the election, and after the coalition negotiations that must follow. That won’t be until the end of the year, which will be just about when the pre-election frenzy in the US will be starting. Various domestic issues of importance will languish – such as the reform of the Supreme Court, which I believe is essential and should be decoupled from any attempt to grant Bibi immunity from prosecution on the several corruption charges pending against him.
And it’s possible that the whole thing could happen again this September. It’s totally unacceptable that the creation of a new government can be stymied by one stubborn individual, whose party received about 4.2% of the vote.
The general problem is the way a small party can exploit its position to gain massive leverage and benefits. The Haredi parties, who are prepared to go with either the Right or Left depending on who offers them the best deal in cabinet positions, money for yeshivot, freedom from military service, and Torah-based legislation, are famous for this, but they are not the only ones that do it. Of course this applies once there is a government as well as at coalition-making time; if they are unhappy, they can vote with the opposition to bring down a government.
The bribes paid to the various prospective coalition partners – because this is what they are – are expensive. New ministries and their staffs are created to give jobs to important partners. Institutions are subsidized, welfare benefits for particular segments of society are expanded, and so forth. The negotiators are generous. Why shouldn’t they be, it’s absolutely vital (they think) that their party get to lead the nation, and it’s taxpayer money anyway.
It was felt that there were too many small parties, so the percentage of the vote needed to get into the Knesset at all was increased. It presently stands at 3.5%, which means that if a party doesn’t get that many votes (equivalent to four seats), they get no seats and their votes are lost. This is what happened to my vote this April, when the New Right party of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked barely missed the cut-off by a thousand votes. Now there aren’t numerous one and two-seat factions in the Knesset, but the extortion problem still exists. And the high cut-off harms the medium-size parties because it impels voters to choose the biggest parties out of fear of having their votes neutralized.
There are some very good things about Israel’s system. A citizen makes a clear ideological choice in voting for a party, and Israelis care about ideology. Even if you vote for a party that just makes it over the threshold with four or five seats, your people will have influence in the Knesset, and perhaps in the Cabinet if they join the coalition. Unlike the American or British systems in which parliamentary candidates stand for election from geographical districts, there is no problem of gerrymandering (drawing district boundaries to disenfranchise voters of a particular party or particular ethnic groups). Gridlock caused by conflict between the executive and legislative branches, so characteristic of the American government, is far less likely.
I don’t have an easy solution. Politics is politics, and it will always involve deals in smoke-filled rooms. But is there anything we can do to clean up the coalition system, without losing the worthwhile parts?
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Paul’s arguments for a Presidential system can be found at https://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2015/04/23/constitution/israel-presidential-system/
He currently writes periodically at Arutz 7 (Israel National News)
Bear, I remembered the name of the distinguished professor whom I referenced before, whose plan for reforming Israel’s constitution somewhat resembled yours. His name is Paul Eidelberg. This is what Wikipedia says about him: “Paul Eidelberg (born 1928) is an American-Israeli political scientist, author and lecturer, and is the founder and president of The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, with offices in Jerusalem. He is also president of the Yamin Yisrael Party.
Contents
1 Early career
2 Academic career
3 Policy and politics
4 Published works
5 See also
6 External links
Early career[edit]
Eidelberg served in the United States Air Force where he held the rank of first lieutenant. He received his doctoral degree at the University of Chicago where he studied under Leo Strauss. He designed the electronic equipment for the first brain scanner at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital.[citation needed]” I haven’t looked up his web site yet. Will get back to you with it.
p.s.https://foundation1.org is his web site
@ Adam Dalgliesh:My proposal allows some of the current MKs to keep their jobs if they are elected with their party or run in a district.
Even then it is very different than what has been going for 71 years. This way they would not be automatically voting themselves out of office. I am not the only who has come up with the concept that some MKs should be directly elected so they will be more likely to keep their promises or be voted out.
Israelis likely would prefer that the PM is from the largest part because it is less likely to have gridlock. Once when when there was direct elections for PM there was gridlock. Sort of like what they US has when POTUS and Congress are from different parties.
What I tried to come up with was the best of all worlds but it is very theoretical.
My own persoanl preference would be to go to the opposite extreme as far as representation in the Knesset is concerned. I believe that any loyal citizen should be represented in parliament, even if his views are eccentric or unusual. Sometimes their outside-the box views are useful and worthy of discussion. As many citizens as possible should be able to put forward their ideas for discussion in the Knesset. Also, frankly, most of the small parties that can’t make the “threshold” are right of center, like me. Because all Israeli politicians and would-be-politicians like to run their own show, asking the smaller parties to either unite or form “technical” joint voting lists before the elections is unworkable and unfair. Too many people who should be in parliament, like Shaked, Bennet and Feiglin, and their respective parties, are excluded from it under the present system.
@ Bear Klein: Definitely an interesting proposal, Bear. I will have to think about it. Perhaps compare it to the European countries that have a similar system.
There is a well-known Israeli professor (I am getting senile and can’t remember his name, although I think it begins with an “E”). who advocates a Presidential system for Israel. The President would be directly elected and not a member of parliament. All members of parliament would be directly elected by the voters in election districts. The candidate with the most votes, even if he does not win a majority, would be the MK for that district.
While this system would have its good points, one flaw in it is that the leftist establishment would find a way to outrageously gerrymander the election districts to favor leftist candidates.
The begest flaw in this system, however, is that the author did not make provision to limit the powers of the courts and make them less political. In my opinion, this is a sine qua non for any revision of Israel’s present constitution (which consists of the Basic Laws).
Vic, I always a couple of things should happen to improve the electoral system and have more responsive governments. A Basic Law should be passed to enact the following or similar:
1. Half the Knesset members should be elected directly from local regions proportionally based on population, running as individuals just like a mayor would not on a party list. Naturally they would likely be backed by a party.
2. The other would still be elected by party lists. 10% would be the minimum for a list to pass the threshold. No MK would be able to a minister or deputy MK.
3. The Prime Minister would be automatically elected from the largest party, stated as the Parties PM candidate The PM would be pick a cabinet of Professional Ministers (not MKs) ,the positions and ministries would be fixed by law. The Security Cabinet would include the Defense Minister, Foreign Minister, Prime Minister and 6 other MKs. The Prime Minister would be able to pick an MK in lieu of him/herself for the Knesset.
4. The term of Prime Minister and a Knesset would be 4 years unless a bill is passed by 61 Knesset members dissolving the Knesset.
This from today’s Ynetnews: “Ex-Shin Bet Head Yaakov Peri Joins Cannabis Company CANN-IL
Peri is yet another public figure joining the Israeli medical cannabis industry, after former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert
Tzally Greenberg 14:1803.06.19
Yaakov Peri, previously the head of Israeli security agency Shin Bet and a former Israeli minister of science, technology, and space, is yet another public figure joining the Israeli medical cannabis industry. Peri will be joining CANN-IL, a newly formed medical cannabis research company, as president and partner.” There are also several military chiefs of Staff, and a former chief of the regular police, who are going into the cannibas business.
This surely, is also a form of corruption, since these individuals can use their political influence to help the newly-formed cannibis companies to obtain the complete legalization of “recreational” marijuana in Israel.
With so many of his former colleagues in government going into the marijuana busines, it is difficult for me not to believe tht Leiberman is heading in that direction, too. That would explain why he had the “courage” to create all this disruption of the Israeli government, economy and defense forces (because the Knesset is not in session to authorize the purchase of armaments, vital arms shipments from the u.S will be delayed until after September.Israel’s antiquated military helicopter fleet can’t be replaced until then).
If Yvette is planning to join his numerous former defense department and other governmentsl colleagues in the pot business, it would explain why he just doesn’t care about the harm to Israel he has caused. So long, suckers!