The impossibility of improving Knesset’s efficiency
Why has Israel’s constitutional reform in 1996 failed? A case study.
In 1996 the political system Israel voluntarily changed from a parliamentary to a presidential system. To a political scientist this is of special interest, not only because such change usually does not happen as quietly and with all surrounding circumstances untouched (ceteris paribus) as in this case, but also as the reform gloriously failed to meet its intended target — reducing the amount of parties represented in the Knesset and was therefore reversed again in 2001.
The Knesset is traditionally one of the most splintered parliaments in the world. In 1992 its 120 Members split up into 10 fractions. This strongly affects the efficiency of the parliaments work as it faces an incredible amount of negotiations to be done, which wouldn’t be necessary if it consisted of less, but larger fractions.
Therefore the Knesset decided in 1992 that the Prime Minister would be elected directly by the people alongside the parliamentary elections next time and not, as common before and after this constitutional reform, by the members of the Knesset. Directly electing the head of government shifted Israel’s polity from a parliamentary to a presidential system.
It is also to be mentioned, that Israel has no traditional constitution, instead the Knesset signed (and from time to time changed) eleven basic laws it decided to unify into a constitution in 1960, but this has not happened since. The reason for that is an argument from the time of the states creation, concerning the relation between religion and state.
The idea that electing the PM separately would reduce the number of parties represented in the Knesset relates to the so called deflationary effect of presidential elections. It assumes that the head of government is the most powerful and therefore most interesting position in a political system for both the politicians as well as the voters. So if the elections for the parliament and the — in this case- prime minister- are scheduled closely together, the major attention would fall to the presidential election. And as only one politician is elected to be the head of government, small parties do not have a chance of winning and therefore either do not send a contestant or support a candidate from another larger party and focus their campaign efforts towards the parliamentary election.
And now the stage for the deflationary effect is set: as the main focus is put on the election of the prime minister, which only has contestants from few but large parties, the voters put their main effort into this decision and many of them would just vote the party of their favourite in the prime ministerial election in the parliamentary election as well. This would lead to shrinking amount of votes for smaller parties and thus reducing the amount of parties that achieve more than the 1.5 per cent required to enter the Knesset.
The requirements were all met: in all three elections under the new system (1996,1999 and 2001) there were only two candidates in the prime ministerial elections achieving a mentionable share of votes and in every case the main focus of the public interest in the election of the prime minister outran that of the Knesset.
Despite all the effort, the fragmentation of the parliament has risen from 11 parties represented in 1992 to 15 in 1999. But why did the reform fail?
Probably the explanation can be found in the composition of the Israeli society, which is more heterogeneous than most. The society can basically be split into the Arab-Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority, which came to the country since 1948. Since being founded, the population of Israel has risen steadily from 872,000 in 1948 (82.2 per cent Jewish; 17.12 per cent Arab- Palestinian) to 7.24 mio in 2007 (75 per cent Jewish; 20.6 per cent Arab-Palestinian; 4.4 per cent other). The rise of the population is mainly based in Jewish immigration to the state. In 1948 six per cent of the worlds Jewish population lived in Israel, in 2006 this share has risen to 41. The reason that the Arab-Palestinian population has not sunk is that they simply have a higher reproduction rate in comparison.
The Jewish population is also split into different groups. The main group, especially during the time of founding and establishing the State of Israel and forming the elite of the society during the last decades were the “Ashkenasim”; Jews from Central and Eastern Europe as well as the USA, many of them surviors of the Shoa and their descendants. They are the leading figures in the reformist movement as well as in orthodox Judaism and also in the settlers- and peace movement.
The second largest group are the oriental Jews (“Sephardim”) who immigrated mostly during the country’s first ten years. Coming to Israel was a cultural shock for many of them, because of the European/ US- style the Ashkenasim had created the country. They were also mostly not familiar with speaking hebrew as their first language in everyday life. They are generally more religious and also they also often lack behind economically and socially. This led them to establishing parties representing their interests.
A group that came to rising importance during the 90ies were Jews who immigrated from the former Soviet Union after its collapse. Meanwhile they represent 20 percent of the Jewish and 14 percent of the total population and therefore are the largest minority. Facing retentiveness within the “original” population and coming from a different background, growing up in the Soviet Union, they established their own social structures and media.
Things that happened during the nineties — Social change and Intifada
The nineties were dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The decade began with the first Intifada that began in 1987 and stretched until the Oslo treaty in 1993. It was crucial to the peace process that meant improvements on both sides and lead to the Nobel Peace Prize for Yassir Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994. But a number of suicide bombings in 1995 and 1996 led to shrinking support for the peace process amongst the Jewish population. This resistance peaked in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4th in 1995 by a Jewish extremist.
The elections of 1996 were dominated by the peace process. Shimon Peres wanted to continue the de-escalation Rabin had started, whereas Netanyahu tried to hook on the fears of suicide bombings and Palestinian terror by hawkish rhetoric. The election of the Knesset received far less public attention. The voters used the new system to split their votes. For example one third of the voters of the left wing Meretz party stated, they had voted for Peres’ Avoda (Labour) party if the election would have been held with the old method. On the other side of the spectrum 12 percent of the voters of religious right wing parties would have voted for Netanyahus Likud. Netanyahus success surprised many and was seen as proof for a move to the right by the Israeli people. Although this has to be regarded carefully, due to the extremely close result of 50.5 : 49.5.
Anyway policies changed under the new government that slowed down the peace process. Especially appointing Ariel Sharon as the new Secretary of National Infrastructure, responsible for the settlement programme, sparked sharp controversies. The later to become Prime Minister had to step down as the Secretary of Defence in 1982 after massacres in Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 during the Lebanon war.
The disintegration on both the Palestinian and Israeli side was getting stronger and the violence slowly escalated. There were more suicide bombings which were then responded with new settlements and vice versa. The tipping point was reached, when the negotiations at Camp David failed and the second Intifada began in 2000.
In 1999 the Netanyahu administration was in a crisis and after a vote of no confidence, Ehud Barak was elected. He tried to re-establish the peace process, but as both sides were stuck, he was unable to achieve any accomplishments in this field. In contrary, the second Intifada began during his tenure and thus in 2001 Barak called for a special election of the PM, where Likud leader Ariel Sharon defeated him clearly (62.39 / 37.61). After that the constitution returned to the old parliamentary model.
During the period of the changed constitution, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worsened and thus led to a growing number of voters for small hawkish religious parties. Also the influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their organisation in new founded parties, such as “Israel ba Alijah” and “Israel Beitanu”, increased the number of fractions in the Knesset.
Although all requirements for the deflationary effect were met, the strong diversity of the Israeli society prevented it from happening. The voters concentrated on the Prime Ministerial elections, but instead of just voting the same party their candidate represents, they just voted for the party that represented their socio-economic, cultural and religious status. This is only possible, because the party system in Israel is, in contrary to most other democracies, designed along these lines.
