New Record! Netanyahu Now Longest Continuously Serving Israeli Prime Minister

As of November 22, 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu will have occupied the Prime Minister’s Office for 2,793 days in a row, thereby surpassing David Ben-Gurion for the longest continuous tenure as premier in Israeli history.

As of Nov. 22, 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu will have occupied the Prime Minister’s Office for 2,793 days in a row, thereby surpassing David Ben-Gurion for the longest continuous tenure as premier in Israeli history. Note that Ben-Gurion’s cumulative service still exceeds Netanyahu’s, who will not overtake him in that respect until July 2019.

While Netanyahu’s incumbency is relatively lengthy, he actually lags behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been in office since 2005, Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand (2008), and President Barack Obama of the United States, who has been in office since 2009, among currently serving leaders.

Historically, Netanyahu ranks 62nd on the list of democratic leaders who have held office since 1945. If he remains Prime Minister until the end of the 20th Knesset's scheduled term in November 2019, he will jump to 21st place.

Continuous Service of Heads of Government in 32 Western Democracies*

Rank	Name	Country	Years in Office	Days in Office (as of Nov. 22, 2016)
1	Tage Erlander	Sweden	1946–1969	8404
2	Jean-Claude Juncker	Luxembourg	1995–2013	6893
3	Jawaharlal Nehru	India	1947–1964	6130
4	Robert Menzies	Australia	1949–1966	5878
5	Helmut Kohl	Germany	1982–1998	5870
6	Pierre Werner	Luxembourg	1959–1974	5584
7	Konrad Adenauer	Germany	1949–1963	5143
8	François Mitterand**	France	1981–1995	5109
9	Felipe Gonzalez	Spain	1982–1996	4903
10	David Oddsson	Iceland	1991–2004	4887
11	Bruno Kreisky	Austria	1970–1983	4781
12	Jacques Chirac**	France	1995–2007	4382
13	Ruud Lubbers	Netherlands	1982–1994	4309
14	John Howard	Australia	1996–2007	4284
15	Margaret Thatcher	UK	1979–1990	4226
.	.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.	.
19	Angela Merkel	Germany	2005–	4018
.	.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.	.
46	John Key	New Zealand	2008–	2925
55	Barak Obama**	United States	2009–	2863
.	.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.	.
62	Benjamin Netanyahu	Israel	2009–	2793
63	David Ben-Gurion	Israel	1955–1963	2792

*Since 1945, or from the year in which a country adopted a democratic form of government, the 32 developed democracies on the list (the majority of which have a parliamentary system) are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

**President

Some maintain that in view of Netanyahu’s long incumbency, Israel should follow the American example and enact term limits, drafting legislation for a two term limit for the prime minister. But while that approach may be appropriate for local authorities or in a presidential system (where the president is chosen in direct elections and does not require a parliamentary vote of investiture), it is not a relevant option for parliamentary democracies such as Israel.

After all, a parliamentary system has sufficient safety valves in place to prevent the head of the executive branch from accumulating so much power as to endanger democracy. In Israel, a prime minister can lose a no-confidence vote in the Knesset; lose the support of his/her ministers, who may urge him/her to resign (as was the case with Ehud Olmert in 2008), or be deposed by members of his/her own party.

Given these mechanisms, we need to view this political situation in Israel with a long-term perspective, without fixating on specific circumstances and leaders.
If anything, the conventional wisdom is that Israel suffers from a lack of stability and continuity, which impedes on good governance. It is important to remember that since 1988 every general election has been held ahead of schedule, and with regard to Israel's current government, which has been in office less than two years, over a third of the ministerial portfolios have already changed hands.

Moreover, when examining statistics related to the premiership, since the early 1990s, the turnover rate of prime ministers (Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert, and Netanyahu again) has been among the highest of any Western democracy.

Finally, without relating to Netanyahu specifically, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a long tenure in the Prime Minister’s office. Certainly, it would be a mistake to conclude that there is a need for structural changes such as term limits without first considering Israel's short, volatile political history and looking at the experiences of other liberal democracies that share representative systems similar to ours.