One Minister Wearing Five Hats
With Justice Minister Yariv Levin's recent appointment as Acting Minister of Jerusalem and Jewish Heritage, he now holds five ministerial portfolios. This situation, with Levin and other ministers, is harmful to public interest and raises important legal and procedural questions.
Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Last week, Justice Minister Yariv Levin was appointed Acting Minister of Jerusalem and Jewish Heritage. With this appointment, he now holds no fewer than five ministerial portfolios.
In July, after Shas withdrew from the government, Levin was already appointed Acting Minister of the Interior, Religious Affairs, and Labor. Given that the Basic Law: The Government limits an acting minister to serving three months in place of a departing minister, Levin is expected to hold these four portfolios, in addition to the Justice Ministry, until October 17.
Close behind him on the list of multi-portfolio ministers is Tourism Minister Haim Katz. This week, he was appointed Minister of Construction and Housing, a position he has already been filling in an interim capacity since Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf resigned. Since Shas’s departure from the government, Katz has also been serving as Acting Minister of Health and Acting Minister of Welfare and Social Affairs.
Simultaneously serving as minister of multiple ministries is harmful to public interest and should concern us all, especially when it comes to four or five portfolios at once. It is clear that a minister heading a single major ministry cannot possibly devote the full energy and attention required to manage additional ministries. This means that for months there will be no one to formulate policy, supervise its implementation, promote legislation in the ministry's areas of operations or advance reforms and appointments. Essential decisions will be delayed, and the harm will ultimately land on Israeli citizens, who depend on the services provided by the ministries.
This is always problematic, but all the more so now, in the midst of an ongoing war that challenges every sphere of life: security, diplomacy, the economy, education, health, welfare, and more. The need for full-time ministers could not be more vital. As they say, "Jack of all trades is a master of none." Ministries are left with no one taking true ownership, which weakens oversight of the professional echelon of that ministry, reduces effectiveness, and undermines public trust.
There is also the risk of institutional conflicts of interest. Different ministries often have diverging priorities. When one minister controls several of them, the danger arises that one ministry will be favored at the expense of another. Past legislative proposals to bar permanent appointments of a single minister to more than one ministry raised precisely this concern . For example, a finance minister also heading another ministry might give preferential treatment to that ministry in budget allocations. While the current appointments are technically temporary, three months is hardly a negligible period of time.
The legal picture is also complex. Basic Law does not prohibit one minister from holding multiple portfolios, even on an acting basis. Still, such arrangements may be deemed unreasonable. The Supreme Court addressed a closely related question about a decade ago in the Yesh Atid case, which examined whether the prime minister may also serve concurrently as a minister. The Court affirmed that the prime minister may assume additional portfolios, but stressed that not every such arrangement would be reasonable. It depends on how many ministries are involved, their size, and the scope of their activity.
At least some of the Court’s reasoning applies equally to an ordinary minister heading a large ministry. The risks of overload, institutional conflict of interest, and the inability to remain neutral in disputes between ministries are all valid here, if in slightly different form. Moreover, in Cabinet (i.e., government minister) deliberations, ministers vote as individuals, not as portfolios. A minister holding five portfolios still casts only one vote. This means that the “voices” of the other ministries currently led by Levin and Katz in an acting capacity effectively disappear. That is a serious problem, since a minister is expected to represent the specific interests of the ministry he or she heads.
The simultaneous tenure of a minister in several ministries, certainly on this scale, not only harms the public interest but also raises serious doubts about its reasonableness. It would be wise to consider legislative reforms that impose at least a limitation, if not prohibition, on the number of portfolios a minister may hold, whether permanently or in an acting capacity. Until then, there should be a more even distribution of acting roles among different members of the government (and, for that matter, between men and women). At the end of the day, it's the people of Israel who suffer when their leaders are spread too thin.
Prof. Suzie Navot is Vice President, Research at the Israel Democracy Institute | Dr. Moran Kandelshtein-Haina is a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute