Primaries and Other Methods of Candidate Selection

This volume is the fruit of ongoing monitoring of the efforts of Israeli political parties to introduce primary elections, alongside extensive comparative research on the issue of parties’ selection of their candidates. Two main lessons emerged from this study. The first is that the primary system introduced by the Labor Party in 1992 to select its Knesset candidates, which inspired other parties when they designed their own primary systems, is unusual in comparison to the methods used by parties in other parliamentary democracies.

Second, as primary elections become more deeply rooted in Israel, it becomes clear that the system has far-reaching consequences beyond its effects on the parties that adopt it.

If primary elections become standard in most parties, they will lead to qualitative changes in the standing of parties in the democratic system, the parliamentary system, public norms, and in political culture.

These changes require public discourse and demand that the political system reevaluates the question of whether Israeli political parties should hold primaries. This volume is intended to support the discussion of fundamental and practical questions that deal with the design and implementation of methods for selecting candidates by Israeli parties.