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REFORMING the ISRAELI ELECTORAL SYSTEM: WHAT’S NEEDED? WHAT’S POSSIBLE? by Tamar Friedman

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REFORMING the ISRAELI ELECTORAL SYSTEM: WHAT’S NEEDED? WHAT’S POSSIBLE? by Tamar Friedman MAY 2015 REFORMING THE ISRAELI ELECTORAL SYSTEM: WHAT’S NEEDED? WHAT’S POSSIBLE? By Tamar Friedman Tamar is a graduating senior from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Political Science, and an intern at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Over a month and a half has passed since the March 17th Israeli parliamentary elections decisively granted Netanyahu’s Likud party more seats in the Knesset than the opposing Zionist Union. Yet Netanyahu was unable to form a working government until May 6th, only two hours before the deadline, and even then he scraped by with a coalition that gave him a narrow – and precarious – majority of one vote in the Knesset. Something is wrong with this picture. Since the birth of the country, Israel’s electoral system has been criticized for favoring small parties over large ones and for granting a disproportionate amount of power to fringe ideological groups. The polarizing effect of this electoral system has led to a rapidly changing political landscape with parties popping up and disbanding with great frequency. It has led to stagnant governments that are more and more often dissolving themselves before the end of their term. It has led to a wild political scramble to form a coalition that continues for weeks after the results of an election come in. In the aftermath of the 2015 election, some scholars have critiqued Israel’s electoral system and called for various reforms. This isn’t the first time in Israel’s 67-year history that the electoral system has been questioned but it has sparked an important debate about how the electoral system shapes government and how it will shape the government in the future. What are the basic contours of the Israeli electoral system? What problems have Israelis discerned in the system? What changes have been made to address those problems, and what reforms may still be helpful? The Development of the System Historically, Israel’s electoral system developed as a result of the Yishuv political landscape. At the time of its founding, Israel needed a system that supported many parties because the influx of immigrants from a wide range of countries led to a rapidly changing Israeli polity.1 Instead of a presidential system where the executive branch is separate from the legislative branch and the president is elected directly by the people (as in the US), Israel chose a parliamentary system based on the principles of proportional representation (PR). In this type of system, voters cast ballots for political parties rather than individuals and all parties that surpass the minimum threshold of votes are awarded a number of seats in the Knesset that is proportionate to the percentage of votes they received. By keeping this electoral threshold low, there were few barriers to political entry and the system encouraged the formation of new parties with a wide range of platforms. It allowed for many smaller, ideological parties to flourish, which is compatible with an immigrant population that is building a new national identity. At the country’s birth the electoral threshold was as low as 1 percent of the vote. Within a PR system, the candidates elected to the legislative body can be chosen through either closed or open lists. Israel adopted a closed list system wherein each party internally determines the order of the candidates on its party list before the 1 The Knesset. “The Electoral System in Israel.” http://www.knesset.gov.il/description/eng/eng_mimshal_beh.htm#1. election. When voters go to the ballot box, they cast a vote for a party, knowing that if the party wins 15 seats, those seats will be filled by the top 15 individuals in that party’s fixed ranked list.2 This electoral decision served to increase the power of party elites in Israel’s burgeoning new state by giving them the power to determine the order of the candidates as opposed to voters who determine the order of candidates on an open list. Another electoral choice is district size. In the formation of the Israeli electoral system, Israel was not divided into subdistricts that each elected one or multiple candidates. Rather, the entire country is treated as a single constituency and candidates run on a national platform. This means that candidates are not territorially tied to their constituents and do not need to rely on concentrated local support for reelection. This makes sense in the context of the emerging Israeli state because Israel is a very small country geographically and did not have strong regional distinctions at its birth. The parliamentary elections are only the first part of forming a new government in Israel. According to the Israeli electoral law adopted at Israel’s formation, the leader of the party that wins the most votes is not automatically selected as the prime minister. After the election results are announced, the Israeli president is tasked with asking whichever party leader he thinks can succeed to try and form a governing coalition. While the president usually asks the leader of the party that received the most votes to form a coalition, this is not true across the board. This practice of the president selecting the prime minister is a response to setting up a system that creates many political parties, none of which are likely to gain enough votes to govern on their own. Therefore, Israeli governments rely on coalitions between different ideological parties and the president’s involvement serves to ensure that the new prime minister is capable of forming such a coalition. The Knesset member chosen to create a coalition is granted 28 days by law to form a coalition, with the possibility of extending for up to 14 additional days. If s/he cannot form a coalition by that time, the president is to select another Knesset member to form one. Finally, the Knesset’s Basic Law of 1958 establishes that the Knesset can dissolve itself before the end of its full term if a law calling for its dissolution is passed by a majority of Knesset members.3 The prime minister may call on the Knesset to dissolve itself if the government is at a stalemate. Proposed and Enacted Electoral Changes Since its founding, Israel has undertaken gone through some electoral reforms, relating to the electoral threshold and method of selecting a prime minister, and further reforms have been suggested that were never actually adopted. The electoral threshold has steadily increased since the birth of the state. The Knesset passed laws to raise it from 1 percent to 1.5 percent in 1992, then to 2 percent before the 2003 election.4 Just before the 2015 election, the electoral threshold was raised once more to 3.25 percent. These changes were made with the intention of excluding the smallest parties from government and thereby strengthen the power of the most popular parties. Nonetheless, the Israeli electoral threshold has only changed by small increments over the history of the country and still falls well below that of many other countries. Thresholds are a popular feature of electoral systems and are present in twenty out of twenty-eight EU countries, yet only two of those countries have thresholds below 3 percent. Thresholds in European countries are much more likely to be in the 5-10 percent range.5 Additionally, the country went through a brief period (1992-2001) in which Israeli constituents directly elected the prime minister, forming what was essentially a “presidential” system (though the Knesset still had to affirm the prime minister’s election with a vote of confidence).6 This new system was adopted after “the stinking maneuver,” 3 months of crisis and stagnancy in the Knesset in the early 1990’s, with the hopes of ending the political stalemates that resulted from the PR system.7 However, the new electoral reform only lasted for three elections (1996, 1999, and 2001) before it was repealed. 2 For example, the full Zionist Camp list can be found on the website of the Israeli Central Elections Committee. http://www.bechirot20.gov.il/election/Candidates/Pages/OneListCandidates.aspx. 3 The Knesset. “Basic Law: The Knesset – 1958.” http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic2_eng.htm. 4 Neri Zilber. “Israel’s Governance Law: Raising the Electoral Threshold.” The Washington Institute March 10, 2014. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/israels-governance-law-raising-the-electoral-threshold. 5 Ibid. 6 It is important to note that the Israeli Prime Minister does not simply function as the head of the largest party in the Knesset as the Majority Leader in the Senate or House of Representatives in the US, but also holds most of the real executive power (the Israeli president is the official head of state). 7 Emanuele Ottolenghi. “Why Direct Election Failed in Israel.” Journal of Democracy 12:4, 2001, pp. 109, 111. Available through: Project MUSE. https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v012/12.4ottolenghi.pdf. Instead of limiting the power of the smaller parties that had caused political stalemate as expected, critics argue that the new reform led voters to split their ticket, voting for a prime minister candidate not associated with the party they voted for in the parliamentary election.8 Without the incentive to vote for one of the major parties so that its leading MK could become prime minister, voters were more inclined to cast ballots for smaller, fringe parties, further fragmenting the political landscape. Roy Isacowitz, a writer for Haaretz , argues that the negative experience of moving to the direct election of the prime minister and then repealing that measure soon after has made Israelis wary of instituting further electoral reform.
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