Israeli Republicanism

The public tend to speak of political blocs of right and left ("left" mostly comprising clear adherents of privatization and supremacy of wealth, while imbued with social compassion). However, this refers for the most part to blocs with borders that are hazy, both to the voter and to the post-election observer, and are organized around political issues that are either anachronistic or short-lived - in other words, dependent on fast-changing political situations. Voting under such conditions constitutes a gamble, as one has no way of knowing what coalition or policies this would beget.

This continuous crisis is an important part of a general, complex process of de-politicization, of removing from Israelis their ability to decide between clear alternatives and collectively influence their economic and financial lives as well as the foreign and defense policy of the state. However, this weakening of democratic politics undermines one of the most significant achievements of political Zionism as a whole, and should be a source of concern for Zionists of both right and left social thinking. The erosion of Israeli republicanism from the mid-1980s onwards has reached exaggerated levels that threaten the functioning and even the robustness of the State, whatever its social orientation. The process of disintegration of Israeli politics threatens the very ability of effective rule in the State of Israel, whatever the government's political views.

If we are interested in renewing Israelis' sense of control over their destiny, their effective political sovereignty, and their ability to shape their own society, we must rearrange our political arena, our political parties, and the laws regulating their activity and connection to the regime and to state institutions. Such comprehensive reforms are essential for the rehabilitation and development of the State's regulatory capability and with it, restoring sovereignty to its citizens.

Within the Jewish yishuv (pre-State Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel), and later in the State of Israel, there emerged quite a developed democratic-republican civil society, which established a democratic law-abiding state, despite the raging bloody national conflict, profound demographic upheavals, social cleavages, and economic hardships. Democracy, the rule of law, and civil and social stability could not have developed without a civic-republican consciousness commonly held by wide strata of the Jewish-Israeli population—left and right, religious and secular, long-time inhabitants and new immigrants. This consciousness, termed in Israeli political discourse as "Mamlakhtiyut," created the basis for the democratic law-abiding government in Israel and also contributed, to a great extent, to social cohesion and the beginnings of the welfare state during the first decade of the State's establishment, which were also based on the comprehensive civic-republican connection.

The concept embodied in Israeli "Mamlakhtiyut" is well explained by the political theory referred to in the scientific research of the last forty years as "republicanism." This doctrine views the existence of a developed public sphere as conditional for the significant and sovereign life of the individual, and therefore emphasizes the importance of participation in the political-public sphere and the development of civic consciousness and responsibility. Mamlakhtiyut is in fact an Israeli form of democratic republicanism, and its various manifestations are ultimately variations of a republican worldview shared by most Israelis.

This essay examines the central manifestations of the Israeli republican ideology from its inception up to the present, against the backdrop of its roots in the yishuv, in order to indicate that the civic ideologic infrastructure, common to Israeli society, can assist in the present-day rehabilitation of Mamlakhtiyut. First and foremost, Mamlakhtiyut contains the roots of Israeli civil strength, thus it can explain the robustness—against all odds—of democracy, the rule of law, and social stability in Israel. A careful examination of the historical foundations of this robustness, while keeping in mind the extreme changes that have occurred over the last decade, may assist in lifting Israeli Mamlakhtiyut from its current crisis.
 
Furthermore, the beginnings of Mamlakhtiyut are a constitutive part of Israeli history, not only in its political-institutional meaning, but also culturally: the discourse, symbols, and civic culture that developed within it are a well of notions, civil-political ideologies, and symbols that serve Israeli society up to present times, and are part and parcel of Israeli identity, besides cultural-national and religious components. Israel is a republican democracy no less than it is a Jewish society.

From the shifts in the ideology of Mamlakhtiyut within its Zionist sources in the first decade of the State, it appears that while there was a debate over Mamlakhtiyut, more importantly, it served as the common and significant platform on which profound ideological disputes were discussed. It thus served as an essential common denominator for the main protagonists struggling then over the shaping of the new political society.

At the end of the 1970s and 1980s, Mamlakhtiyut lost its status as common denominator and defining arena for the boundaries of the main debate within society due to the link of the "Mamlakhti state" with "the welfare state" and with the Keynesian monetary order prevailing in the world from the end of the Second World War and up until the mid-1970s. Mamlakhtiyut seemed exclusively associated with an old-world order from which one must be extricated. The leaders of the privatization revolution seemed to be adopting a non-republican ideology, especially as they were basing themselves on the sectoralization of Israeli society. But the second stage of the privatization revolution, taking place around the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, exposed the fact that its proponents, in fact, upheld a right-wing republican ideology. The disputes over judicialization, appropriate relations between wealth and power, economic centralization, and the role of the executive authority in monitoring and regulating society and the economy, were mostly arguments over the redefinition of Mamlakhtiyut in a period of right-wing Mamlakhtiyut hegemony.

Beyond the weakening of organized labor and the detrimental impact on wide social groups within Israeli society, the harsh results of the process of the rise of right-wing Mamlakhtiyut, has been the considerable weakening of the effectiveness of governmental rule in Israel and the accommodative power of the political parties, as well as the transfer of considerable political power into the hands of private wealth and professional elite groups formally belonging to government authorities. This last, in some ways actually facilitates the weakening of Mamlakhtiyut. Among the professional elite groups one can mention the jurists (whose process of ascent has been described at times as "judicialization"), economists, and executives. These elites range from the public to the private sectors, gradually becoming decisive factors in the shaping of public policy in Israel while circumventing the governmental processes of a power-sharing democracy. The considerable involvement of the courts, legal advisors and Ministry of Finance personnel in the shaping of social policy in Israel are the more blatant examples—but not the only ones—of this situation. The result is deviation from consociational government democracy towards "decisive, enlightened 'republicanism,'" whose decisions lean towards the interests of private wealth. This refers to a republicanism that still maintains the set of political perceptions developed by the West in modern times, and yet is less democratic and less republican by nature, as it further reduces the individual's ability to influence the shaping of the public arena.
 
Now, with such a weakened republican democratic political system, a mighty dispute has arisen between those who wish to maintain the relatively new power gained by the professional systems and those who wish to rebalance the power pendulum in favor of the elected political authorities. This argument is being held after private wealth has already gained substantial influence both among the elected political authorities and the professional elite groups. The obvious axes of discussion required due to the consolidation of the new power relations should run along the similar axes outlined here for the assessment of Mamlakhtiyut in the early days of the State: politics of decision versus consociational politics; left-wing vs. right-wing Mamlakhtiyut; sectoral vs. regulatory-Mamlakhti tendencies; centralized vs. decentralized political and economic power.