No Voice: The Lack of Voting Opportunities in Israeli Democracy
In recent years, it has repeatedly been claimed that “Israel has too many elections.” On the one hand, this is true, Israel has the highest frequency of parliamentary elections compared to all developed democracies. On the other, Israelis have fewer voting opportunities.
In recent years, it has repeatedly been claimed that “Israel has too many elections.” On the one hand, this is true: On a comparative basis, the frequency of parliamentary (Knesset) elections held in Israel since the 1990s is the highest among all developed democracies.[1] This lack of stability causes significant damage: among other things, it makes long-term policy planning difficult, and undermines public trust in the political system.
However, the large number of Knesset elections serves to conceal another, no less serious problem: We do not have enough democratic voting opportunities in Israel. The Israeli public directly participates only in elections for the Knesset and for local authorities. When Knesset elections are not held far too frequently, as has been the case in recent years, the public in Israel has almost no formal way to have its say on the government’s policies and functioning.
The range of democratic elections held in Israel is also particularly small from a comparative perspective. As in Israel, the publics in all other democratic countries also participate in elections for national and local government, but in all of these countries, they also participate directly in additional electoral arenas, including elections to an upper legislature, sub-national elections, presidential elections, elections for the European Parliament, referendums, and more.
From a normative perspective, the ability of the public to participate directly in multiple electoral arenas reflects key democratic principles:
- Public participation in decision-making processes. Members of the public participate in such processes either indirectly, by electing representatives to democratic institutions, or directly, in the case of referendums.
- Political representativeness. Elections allow members of the public to choose representatives who reflect their identity (theoretical representativeness) or their views and needs (substantive representativeness).
- Responsiveness. Elections allow the public to express their preferences to politicians and the government, and they are also the main mechanism for incentivizing elected representatives to nurture their relationship with the public during their term of office and to respond to the public’s demands.
- Accountability. Elections allow the public to punish and reward elected representatives and parties for their actions and behavior.
- Competitiveness. Elections allow politicians and parties to compete for public support, and they are also the mechanism via which control of the government changes hands in democratic countries.
For all these reasons, elections are a central feature of any democratic regime, and elections for parliament—as the broadest and most important representative institution—are considered a fundamental condition for democratic rule (this refers to elections that meet such basic conditions as equality, confidentiality, regularity, generality, freedom of association and expression, and availability of alternative sources of information).[2] But this is merely a threshold condition. For high-quality democracies, there is also a need for democratic elections in a range of arenas and for a range of other institutions.[3]
In high-quality democracies, the relationship between voters and elected representatives must be more frequent and more varied, in two respects: (a) the relationship should allow voters to express their preferences on additional opportunities, between main elections; and (b) the relationship should be based not only on parliamentary elections, but also on elections to other institutions.
Specifically, a central argument for having a range of electoral arenas and voting opportunities in additional to parliamentary elections (and one that is highly relevant to Israel at the current time), especially in the middle of the terms of office of the parliament and government, is that this allows the public to express messages of protest and lack of trust—or alternatively, of support—to its elected representatives. Such messages can be particularly critical when there is a broad sense of dissatisfaction with the government among large parts of the public, but there is no possibility of replacing the government or of bringing forward elections (because of a stable parliamentary majority, or because of specific arrangements that make such steps difficult, such as a high bar for passing a vote of no confidence). In such situations, “interim elections”[4]—for example, for sub-national or supra-national bodies—serve as a kind of seismograph. They allow the public to express its opposition formally and to demonstrate the extent of its dissatisfaction (or satisfaction), and may also subsequently lead to a change in the behavior of the government, or even undermine its stability (as happened in France after the last European elections, for example).
This argument forms the basis for the current analysis: On the one hand, there is a sense—based on public opinion surveys[5]—that a majority of the Israeli public is opposed to the current government and would like early elections (“a government with no public mandate”). This public sentiment began in response to the steps taken by the government toward its judicial overhaul, and grew more extreme following the failures of October 7. On the other hand, the government remains stable, and recently became even more so after the coalition was expanded to include 68 Knesset members (though it recently shrank again, with the withdrawal of Otzma Yehudit). Against this backdrop, the lack of formal mechanisms via which the Israeli public might express its feelings, such as elections, is particularly stark.
More generally, elections to additional political institutions (apart from the parliament and local government) facilitate decentralization of power. Though non-elected institutions also contribute to the decentralization or separation of powers (such as a strong Supreme Court, a state comptroller, and an independent civil service, or even an upper legislature that is not directly elected by the public), holding elections in a variety of arenas is particularly important for decentralization, especially if their result is that the government does not hold a majority in the other arenas.
Table 1 features 35 countries, all of them OECD members and all ranked among the top 50 countries in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2023.[6] The table shows whether there are elections in each country in each of the following arenas (in addition to elections for the lower or sole house of representatives): by-elections for the lower/sole house (see explanation in the notes below the table), upper house, sub-national institutions, municipalities, presidency, European Parliament, and referendums.
Table 1: Voting opportunities available in democratic countries
By-elections
This category refers to elections held during a parliamentary term in order to fill a seat made vacant due to the resignation or death of a member of parliament (usually in single-representative constituencies). Despite their limited nature, such elections are heavily covered by the media as they often indicate public satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the various parties and with the serving government. In the (rare) cases in which the government’s parliamentary majority is very slight, they can even lead to a change in the balance of power in parliament. In the United States, these are known as “special elections.”
Upper house elections
As stated, states with an upper house of representatives that is not directly elected (or not elected at all, such as in Canada and the United Kingdom) are not shown in the table.
Sub-national elections
In all the federal countries in the table (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States), there are elections at the regional (state) level, a level that holds a relatively large degree of power and autonomy. But even some of the unitary states have regional elections; in some, the elected bodies have considerable powers and high importance (Italy, South Korea, Spain, and the United Kingdom), while in others they are weaker. Other unitary states have no elected regional authorities.
In the United Kingdom, only some of the citizenry can participate in regional elections. These are held for the parliaments of Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and also in England, for the Greater London Authority and for several other regional units (“Combined Authorities”). People residing in England outside of London and these other regional units do not participate in regional elections. However, these are significant elections that certainly can reflect satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the political parties and the government.
Direct presidential elections
Direct presidential elections are held in all the presidential regimes (Chile, Costa Rica, South Korea, and the United States) and semi-presidential regimes (France, Lithuania, Poland, and Portugal—though there is not always agreement among researchers about the category of semi-presidential states) in the table. In these states, the president holds significant powers. Direct presidential elections are also held in several parliamentary democracies, though in these cases, the powers of the president (who is the symbolic/ceremonial head of state) are more limited. In other parliamentary democracies, the head of state is not elected (for example, the king of the United Kingdom) or is elected indirectly (as in Israel, where the president is elected by the Knesset).
European Parliament elections
Elections to the European Parliament also often reflect the domestic mood in participating countries, in terms of attitudes toward issues at the national level, or satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the functioning of the government. Candidates are also often attached to parties operating at the national level.
Referendums
These data refer only to referendums at the national level.
- VVV = 6 or more referendums in the last 25 years
- VV = 3–5 referendums in the last 25 years
- V = 1–2 referendums in the last 25 years
The picture presented by Table 1 is clear: Israel stands alone as the only state in which there are direct elections only for the lower/sole house of representatives and for local government. All the other countries in the table feature additional electoral arenas. The leading countries, in which citizens are able to vote in at least six of the eight arenas examined, are: Australia, Austria, Chile, Czechia, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, and the United States.
In fact, the situation in Israel is much worse than reflected in the table. A closer look at the comparative data reveals that the electoral arenas and voting opportunities available to Israel’s citizens are even more limited:
- Elections for the lower/sole house of representatives. While such elections are held in all the countries in the table, Israel is exceptional in that it is the only state in which the electoral system contains neither a personal nor regional component. Israel operates a closed party-list system, in which voters choose a list of candidates, without being able to express a preference for particular candidates, and are not even presented with the names of the candidates at the ballot box (except, on occasion, the name of the head of the party). It is also a national system; that is, with a single voting district from which all 120 Knesset members are elected. In all the other countries in the table, there are sub-national voting districts and/or an opportunity to express a preference for specific candidates—and in many cases, both. The lack of any personal component and of voting districts in the Knesset electoral system limits the ability of voters to express their preferences and reduces the responsiveness and accountability of the political system.
- Elections for the upper house. As noted, the table includes only cases in which the public directly elects the upper house, but there are also many other countries in which an upper house is elected indirectly, via other elected bodies (not the national parliament), such as representatives of sub-national units—for example, in Austria, France, Germany, and Netherlands. In such countries, the election of representatives to the upper house can be used to express protest or dissatisfaction with the government, albeit not directly by the public itself, but by the public’s representatives in other institutions. Of course, there is no upper house of representatives in Israel. Regional elections. The table includes all possibilities for direct elections at the regional level. However, there are countries in which the public has several regional electoral opportunities—the United States, for example, with both state and county elections. In these countries, regional elections constitute two additional electoral arenas, not one (as contrasted with zero voting options at the regional level in Israel), giving the public an even greater opportunity to express its preferences than is reflected in the table.
- Municipal elections. This is one of the only two electoral arenas that exist in Israel. Since the local elections of 1978, there has been a separation between the date of Knesset elections and the date of local elections, and these cannot be held simultaneously. Thus, local elections have real potential to serve as “interim elections,” and among other things to reflect the public’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the parties in the Knesset and the government. However, since at least the 1990s, there has been a growing disconnect between the local and national arenas: The representation of the national parties among council members and heads of authorities is steadily declining, particularly the large aggregate parties (such as Likud and, in the past, Labor), in favor of local “independent” electoral lists and candidates. This significantly impairs the function of local elections as interim elections, that is, their ability to act as a seismograph for the public’s level of satisfaction with central government. From an international perspective, too, though Israel is not the only country in which the national parties have lost ground in local government, they have become weak in Israel to an exceptional degree. A comparative survey with more than 30 countries in Europe found that the share of votes and seats won by local lists in Israel that are named after national parties is second-lowest, ahead only of Italy.[7] Outside of Europe, it is also possible to find less of a connection between local politics and national parties in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.[8]
- Referendums. The table refers only to referendums at the national level, and thus omits the opportunities given to citizens in many other countries (such as the United States) to vote in sub-national referendums. For residents of California, for example, referendums are an important and relatively frequent voting opportunity. No such opportunity exists in Israel, excepting the relatively rare cases of referendums for residents of local authorities, on issues very far from those on the national agenda.
“Interim Elections”
Table 1 presents only part of the picture also because it relates to types of voting opportunities without detailing when they occur (the only category directly related to timing is that of by-elections, which are necessarily held at a different time from general parliamentary elections). As noted, timing is of great importance. For example, if parliamentary elections are held on the same day as elections to the upper house, regional elections, municipal elections, and presidential elections, then citizens’ ability to communicate their dissatisfaction to central government, and certainly to influence its policy or to undermine its stability, is extremely limited. By contrast, if interim elections are spread across several occasions over the parliamentary term, this allows voters to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the government and with specific parties.
To demonstrate the lack of voting opportunities in interim elections in Israel, we present a comparison of Israel with five countries between 2022 and 2024: Australia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, and Spain. In all five, excepting Germany, general parliamentary elections were held during this period (in Germany, they were last held in 2021, and are scheduled again for February 2025). In Australia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, and Spain there were also municipal elections during this period (in Germany, there were municipal elections in some of the Länder, while in Finland, they were last held in 2021).
But in addition to these, there were also elections on other occasions in these countries: In four of them, there were elections for the European Parliament in June 2024; in Australia, Finland, Germany, and Spain there were various regional elections (and only in Finland were these held on a single date); in Ireland, referendums were held on two separate occasions, and one referendum was held in Australia; and in Finland, there were presidential elections. Australia also held four by-elections, on separate dates from the main parliamentary elections.
The conclusion is clear: In all these countries, members of the public had far more opportunities than the public in Israel to express their preferences and their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the government and parties over the course the parliamentary term, and in a range of electoral arenas.
Table 2. Types of elections held in Israel and in five other democracies, 2022–2024
The main finding is clear: Israel has a very limited range of voting opportunities—both in terms of their number, and in terms of their spacing and timing. Moreover, the main electoral arena in Israel (Knesset elections) only offers voters an exceptionally limited opportunity to express their preferences, due to the lack of a regional component and a personal component. Finally, the only other electoral arena available (local elections) no longer reflects the public’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the government and the national parties.
This state of affairs undermines fundamental democratic principles. Overall, it greatly reduces the connection between voters and elected representatives, as well as the public’s ability to influence decision-making and policy-making. But its most prominent expression in Israel today is, as noted, the almost complete absence of any opportunity for the public to voice in a formal and reliable manner (that is, beyond such tools as surveys and demonstrations) its dissatisfaction with the government—which, of course, makes it easy for the government to ignore such dissatisfaction. If the elections for the 26th Knesset do indeed take place in November 2026, this will mean that for four years, voters will have had only one opportunity to formally express their degree of satisfaction with the government—local elections, which as noted, no longer reflect public sentiment about national politics in Israel. Citizens in other countries will have had a much broader range of voting opportunities during this period, on a greater number of different dates.
In terms of policy recommendations, we focus on three main types of recommendation that can be derived from the above analysis:
First, to the extent that this is the current constitutional situation, then the mechanisms protecting freedom of speech and protest must be strengthened. Due to the lack of formal channels for expressing protest and dissatisfaction with the government, the informal channels for doing so are especially important. In a country in which citizens have no formal say about government policy or the composition of the government for four years at a time (at least potentially), then there must be particularly strong protections of the freedom of expression and protest.
Second, the existing electoral arenas should be amended and reinforced, especially the Knesset elections. As noted, the public’s ability to express its preferences via the Knesset elections is greatly restricted, even from a comparative perspective, due to the lack of any personal or regional component in the electoral system.
In recent years, proposals have focused mainly on including a personal component in the system of elections for the Knesset, and in particular, adoption of the system known as a “semi-open ballot,” in which voters are presented at the ballot box with ranked lists of candidates that include candidate names; voters select the ballot of a particular electoral list, and may then, if they choose, mark the names of their preferred candidates on that list. When the votes for each list are counted, the “personal votes” cast for each candidate are also tallied, and candidates who pass a certain threshold of votes (defined in law) may ascend the rankings in that list. Thus, the voters for that list may alter the order of candidates submitted to the Central Elections Committee, and even influence which candidates are ultimately elected to the Knesset. Under the semi-open ballot system, voters are able to express their preferences about specific candidates more accurately, promoting candidates who represent a particular ideological or sectorial identity, and to reward or punish specific Knesset members for their previous behavior.
Comparative research studies show that the expected impact of such a system is that Knesset members would maintain more open and continuous communication with the supporters of their list throughout their term, and that the parties would be more considerate of voters’ preferences regarding the advancement and reward of certain politicians.[9] Similar systems are commonly used in many democracies throughout the world,[10] and they have been proposed by various bodies in Israel apart from the Israel Democracy Institute.
Third, given the lack of electoral arenas in Israel, the government and the Knesset should refrain from restricting the freedom to vote with regard to other institutions for which elections are held among sections of the public—for example, labor unions or the Israel Bar Association.[11]
Fourth, in the long term, it is possible that the lack of electoral arenas in Israel justifies serious consideration of adding more electoral arenas and/or layers of government, as found in other countries—such as an upper house of representatives, or sub-national authorities that are elected directly by citizens on occasions kept separate from the general elections to the Knesset. According to the literature, these would also serve as mechanisms for decentralizing power, and thus they could help mitigate trends toward populism and democratic retreat. This would be especially true in the case of an upper house with legislative powers, and of sub-national authorities with multiple powers (and in particular, authorities whose status is grounded in constitutional legislation, as part of a federal state).
Regarding referendums, this mechanism has already entered the democratic toolbox in Israel thanks to the Basic Law: Referendums, according to which decisions on conceding territories under Israeli sovereignty, which have the support of a majority of Knesset members but less than 80, are to be submitted to the public via a referendum (though legislative amendments are still required in order to define the referendum process).
In principle, referendums can serve as an additional channel for public participation in politics, and can even be a tool for the public to express dissatisfaction with the government or to restrict the government’s actions (for example, if a proposal approved by the government and the Knesset is rejected in a referendum). However, at the current time, we are not in favor of utilizing this tool. As noted by Blander regarding the proposal to hold a referendum about the government’s judicial revolution initiative in 2023, “referendums are not an appropriate mechanism for deeply divided societies, such as Israel’s, because they do not allow complex positions to be expressed, there is no way of appealing their unequivocal outcome, and their results are liable to raise fears of suppression of minority rights.”[12] As a tool designed to reflect the desires of the majority, which is subject to manipulation by the ruling regime and via which the majority can advance policies in a way that is very difficult to challenge (because of the public legitimacy afforded to referendums), referendums can be a double-edged sword, giving more power to the government and silencing the opposition.
Footnotes
[1] Assaf Shapira and Yohanan Plesner, Restoring Stability to the Political System: A Proposal for Reform (Israel Democracy Institute, 2022).
[2] Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (Yale University Press, 1998).
[3] Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino, Assessing the Quality of Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
[4] “Mid-term elections” is a concept from American politics, referring to elections held precisely in the middle of the four-year term of a serving president. We use the term “interim elections” here in a different sense, as in Israel and in other parliamentary democracies such elections are not necessarily held precisely in the middle of the parliamentary term. The research literature generally refers to such elections as “second-order elections”; see, for example: Karlheinz Relf, Hermann Schmitt, and Pippa Norris, “Second‐Order Elections,” European Journal of Political Research 31, no. 1-2 (1997): 109–124.
[5] Tamar Hermann, Lior Yohanani, and Yaron Kaplan, “One Year of War—Public Opinion in Israel at the One Year Anniversary of the War in Gaza,” Israel Democracy Institute website, October 7, 2024.
[6] Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2023 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2024), https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2023/.
[7] Ariel Finkelstein and Asaf Heiman, “The Links and Connections Between Local Electoral Lists and National Parties,” The Book of Local Elections in Israel 2003–2024 (Israel Democracy Institute, in publication); Ofer Kenig and Or Tuttnauer, “The Decline of the Large Aggregate Parties: Is Israel an Extreme Case?”, in Michal Shamir and Gideon Rahat (eds.), The Elections in Israel—2015 (Israel Democracy Institute, 2017), 25–57.
[8] In addition, the powers and level of autonomy of local government in Israel are very limited in comparison to what is common practice internationally—indeed, they would seem to be the most limited out of all the countries listed in the table. Thus, in an indicator assessing “to what extent local government can make final decisions about its tasks,” which is part of the Local Autonomy Index (LAI), Israel ranked second-last in 2020 out of all the member countries of the European Union and the OECD; only Malta and Turkey ranked lower, neither of which appear in the table. See: Ariel Finkelstein and Yuval Yaakov Bartov, Relations Between Central and Local Government: Israel Compared to Other Developed Democracies (Israel Democracy Institute, 2023).
[9] For a comprehensive study on the influence of the personal component on the electoral system, see: Gianluca Passarelli, Preferential Voting Systems (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
[10] Assaf Shapira, “Strengthening the Link Between the Public and its Elected Representatives,” Israel Democracy Institute website, March 12, 2019.
[11] On the attempts to undermine the independence of the elections for the Israel Bar Association, see: Guy Lurie, Amir Fuchs, and Daphne Benvenisty, “Who Sets Membership Fees? The New Battle Over the Independence of the Israel Bar Association,” Israel Democracy Institute website, January 8, 2025.
[12] Dana Blander, “A Referendum at the Current Time Would Push Israel Further Down the Anti-Democratic Slope,” Israel Democracy Institute website, August 13, 2023.