Reforming Israel’s Political System

In September 2009, Arye Carmon, President of The Israel Democracy Institute, offered me the chance to head a project that would examine the system of government in Israel and propose reforms and improvements. I accepted the challenge, and was provided with the necessary resources to carry out this task. A team of nine young and talented researchers were recruited for the project, three of whom were chosen to head a specific topic: political parties (Ofer Kenig); electoral system and the Knesset (Chen Friedberg); and Israel’s government (Shlomit Barnea). Working on each of these topics were two research assistants who were either doctoral students or outstanding master’s students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Matthew S. Shugart of the University of California, San Diego, a world-renowned expert in the study of electoral systems and government, joined our efforts for a period of two and a half months in 2010.

The research team was committed, first and foremost, to providing comprehensive, reliable information and analyzing it in a professional manner, while examining the inherent advantages and disadvantages of preserving or altering the components of Israel’s present political system. Our motivating factor was the desire to bolster democracy in Israel. The hope was, and remains, that Israel’s decision makers will appreciate the effort invested in the research and professional work of the team and will make use of its conclusions and recommendations to improve the institutional fabric of Israeli society. Their role is to decide, and our role is to provide them with the best possible information.

Over the course of the project, each researcher worked both alone and with their topic group. Joint meetings of the group were held on a weekly basis. The research and its products—i.e., reports on various topics—were reviewed by the topic coordinators and myself, as head of the research team. These reports formed the basis for discussion at the Forum for Political Reform in Israel, headed by Justice Meir Shamgar, President Emeritus of Israel’s Supreme Court. The forum was assembled from dozens of leading public figures, male and female, from the fields of law, academia, society, politics, and business. The fruits of the research are presented in this work, following a thorough process of review and debate.

We began the research with an assessment of the weak points in Israeli politics and government. From this stage, the team’s efforts were devoted to examining the potential for various institutional reforms to rectify and improve the areas identified as problematic. Various components of the political system in Israel were analyzed in comparison with longstanding democracies (in Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan) and successful new democracies (for example, the Czech Republic and Poland). The goal was to learn from their experience which aspects of Israel’s system of government should be preserved, and which should be changed (and in what way), bearing in mind the elements that characterize the Israeli polity. Our working assumption was that improving Israel’s political institutions would create incentives for more desirable political behavior, thereby enhancing the functioning of the political system and its actors, attracting men and women of higher caliber to politics, and repairing the image of politics and politicians in the eyes of Israeli citizens. In the long term, such an improvement could contribute to an overall change in Israel’s political culture and in the way that politics is perceived by the country’s citizens.

The subject of this book is political reform in Israel. Our purpose is to examine, through intensive analysis of the Israeli case and comparison with other democracies, which aspects of Israel’s government system—the electoral system, organization of the political parties, and structure and functioning of the government and the Knesset (parliament)—should be preserved, and which should be modified and improved.

The bulk of the reforms may fail, and initiatives for change may be rejected in the majority of cases. Nonetheless, those who see the robustness of Israel’s democratic political system as a prime concern must formulate a suitable program that is comprehensive and well-considered, and attempt to promote it whenever possible, creating the necessary conditions for it to succeed. The marketplace of ideas should not be a “free-for-all,” subject to untested—and even dangerous—ideas and illusions.

The purpose of a serious research institute that pursues the common good is to formulate proposals suited to a given system and society; and when a window of opportunity appears, the right alternatives for change should be presented. Of course, it is also possible to draw up reforms and take steps to promote them via non governmental associations, lobbies, and other public groups that will generate opportunities and pressure to move forward. And therein lies the purpose of this work—to propose a creditable platform for changing certain aspects of Israel’s goverment system while retaining others.

In Israel, reforms can be promoted primarily when a window of opportunity appears for a limited time. The primary obstacle to change in Israel is coalition politics, which enables any small party to block reforms by threatening to bring down the government. This veto power has become virtually institutionalized, and in coalition agreements in recent years there is a clause that grants each faction in a coalition the right to veto amendments to the country’s basic laws. The windows of opportunity (plural, because legislation is an ongoing, multi-step process) open up when the coalition factor is minimized. This takes place, firstly, in the run-up to elections, when not only is the government nearing the end of its term, with coalition concerns playing less of a role, but the coalition members are poised to compete for similar populations, and reforms help them set themselves apart from the rest of the field.

Another opportunity for change is during coalition crises, when the rift cannot be immediately repaired. Thus, for example, the bill to change the electoral system for the 11th Knesset passed its first reading against the backdrop of the “Who is a Jew?” crisis, while the direct elections bill passed its preliminary and first readings during the coalition crisis of March–May 1990, set off by a maneuver that came to be known as the “stinky trick.”

While windows of opportunity are a necessary precondition for advancing reforms, they are not a sufficient one. The likelihood of getting a reform passed depends, first and foremost, on the agents of change—the manner in which they present the reform to politicians and the public (in terms of the best interests of the politicians and the parties, and those of the public), and their success in channeling criticism of the status quo into support for the change they are proposing.

The “reform package” offered in this book, unlike some earlier initiatives, is presented not as a massive, sweeping change to one law but as a series of greater and lesser changes to several basic laws and regulations. Over and above this, the recommendations are grounded on the assumption that even if only some of them are passed, this in itself will not jeopardize or undermine the existing institutional arrangements.

• "Political-Institutional Reform in Israel: A Comparative Perspective" by Matthew Shugart (English)
• Forward and Introduction (English)
• Full Book (Hebrew) 
• Summary of Recommendations (Hebrew)

In the following video interview, conducted upon publication of the book, Prof. Gideon surveys its main recommendations for political reform in Israel.