Israeli Parliament: 12 Party Politics
Some questions, taking off from something Alvaro de Soto said early in this colloquy: that "the political system in Israel allows small, one-issue sectors to effectively prevent the government from following the wishes of the majority."
Israel's electoral system--I think I've got this right--is the ultimate in proportional representation. The whole country is one district. Voters each cast one vote, for a party list. To get into the 120-member Knesset, a party needs two per cent of the vote. Once a party has reached that threshold, it gets one seat for every 1/120th of the total national vote it has received.
Most other democracies that use P.R.--including just about all of continental Europe--have a higher threshold, commonly five per cent. As a practical matter, it's almost impossible for more than four or five parties to win parliamentary seats. In the Knesset there are, at the moment, twelve. Twelve.
Questions:
Is this too many? Is this fruit-fly-like proliferation of parties relevant to Israel's foreign policy, especially with respect to the Palestinians? Is there any sentiment in Israel for raising the floor--to five per cent, say? If so, why haven't any of the unity governments, which presumably didn't need the help of tiny splinter parties to survive, done something about it? Who would lose from raising the floor and who would gain?
I'm an American Jew and pretty much a Zionist and I care a lot about Israel. But mainly I'm an American and we're in the midst of a Presidential election campaign that might well decide the future of America. And most of the time I visit TPM Cafe the discussion these days is Israeli matters, arcana to me.
Please, until after the US elections, could they be discussed a bit more here? Pretty please???
September 11, 2008 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just looked through all the Cafe posts this month and there have been only three posts about Israel other than those tied into the TPMCafe Book Club feature on Bernard Avishai's book. This complaint therefore looks somewhat churlish.
For better or worse, Israel is an important feature of US foreign policy discussions. Not for nothing did Joe Lieberman rush AIPAC into meeting Sarah Palin at a time when she would not face the American press.
September 11, 2008 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm an American Jew and pretty much a Zionist and I care a lot about Israel. But mainly I'm an American and we're in the midst of a Presidential election campaign that might well decide the future of America. And most of the time I visit TPM Cafe the discussion these days is Israeli matters, arcana to me.
Please, until after the US elections, could they be discussed a bit more here? Pretty please???
September 11, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry about the duplicate. System is overloaded and indicated a TO, and then I posted again and both took.
September 11, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Short answer: A 5 percent threshold would reduce the political fragmentation in the Knesset somewhat but not that much, and it wouldn't be good for social cohesion. The problem is that (1) Israeli politics is rather clientelistic, with many parties representing social sectors like Arabs, Mizrahim, Russians or the ultra-Orthodox as much as (or more than) ideological groups, and (2) there are a lot of social sectors.
In the most recent Knesset election, seven parties got at least 5 percent of the vote. Four of these can be classed as sectorial parties - Shas (religious Mizrahim, Caucasians, Central Asians and Ethiopians in roughly that order), United Torah Judaism (ultra-Orthodox non-Zionists), Yisrael Beiteinu (Russians) and National Union (wingnut settlers). These won a total of 38 seats, and would get more if there were a higher threshold, because there would be more "surplus votes" from the parties that didn't make the cut. Thus, assuming similar voting patterns with a 5 percent threshold (which is probably a more valid assumption in Israel than elsewhere given the depth of sectorial identification) the sectorial parties would hold about a third of the Knesset, and it would still be hard for any of the programmatic parties to put together a majority without paying their price.
At least one sector, though - the Arabs - would lose out in a big way. Arab politics in Israel is very fractious: none of the Arab parties has ever exceeded 3.5 percent of the vote, and because of personal and ideological differences, attempts at unity have always failed. So, barring a political miracle, a 5 percent threshold would mean next to no Arabs in the Knesset (there are a few Arabs and Druze on the major party lists) and no parties specifically representing Arab interests. I, um, don't think it would be a good idea to shut that sector out of political participation any more than it already has been. Not to mention that the UTJ vote always hovers near 5 percent, so the ultra-Orthodox representation may be in danger as well.
And in case you're wondering, first past the post probably wouldn't work too well either, because many of the social groups are geographically concentrated enough that sectorial parties could win a substantial number of districts. The one alternative I'd give a chance to is breaking the country down into six or eight regional districts with a 5 to 10 percent threshold in each region. That would allow the sectorial groups to mainatain influence where they are locally numerous (e.g., Arabs in the Galilee and haredim in Jerusalem) and require the majors to recruit candidates from those groups to be competitive, while the high threshold would reduce the fragmentation on a national scale.
This will happen, of course, on the same day that my apartment is declared the capital of Sweden. Israelis can't agree on political reform any more than they can agree on anything else.
September 11, 2008 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is odd that with 20% of the population Israeli Arabs have not found it in their interest to form a unity party. I know that in countries where minorities seem not to act in their interests it is always said that it's their fault -- immaturity, squabbling, rivalries, greed (table scraps being better than no scraps at all), etc.
But that explanation usually turns out to be false -- that is, it turns out to be propaganda put about by the hegenomic parties to cover up a pattern of "freeze-outs" enforced by agreement among them or by procedural rules.
Why haven't Israeli Arabs been able to form a politically unified front?
September 11, 2008 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it that they fear that Arabs would lose the vote and be shut out entirely if they made a move toward amassing real political power?
September 11, 2008 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, that makes little to no sense.
As Israeli citizens, they are guaranteed a right to vote. There is no mechanism by which they could be denied that right.
Are you really suggesting that Arab citizens of Israel purposely diminish their power as a voting block because they think that asserting themselves would lead to a diminished ability to assert their power as a voting block? That's to suggest that they are punishing themselves to avoid being punished.
I don't think that is what is going on.
September 11, 2008 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to the 2008 poll by the Center Against Racism 40% of Jewish citizens believe that Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote. Presumably, taht 40% views Arab Israelis as anti-Jewish and disloyal to the State of Israel.
If true and if Arab Israelis are anxious that they retain their voting rights (together with the legislative scraps that doubtless, regularly fall from the table), then, they might well decide not to risk losing those rights by overplaying their hand and appearing too powerful by combining and amassing their voting power.
But I don't know -- which is why I asked. Does anyone?
September 12, 2008 4:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
But I don't know -- which is why I asked. Does anyone?
I attempted an answer last night, but it came out as a separate comment rather than a reply. See below.
BTW, that 40 percent figure is meaningless, because no more than 4 or 5 percent of Israeli Jews have ever voted for a party which supports that kind of thing. Taking the vote away from Arabs has never been seriously considered even by the right wing parties, and the courts would strike such a measure down in a minute in the unlikely event that it passed. What that figure proves is that Israelis like to vent to pollsters, which is something we also seem to be doing with increasing frequency.
September 12, 2008 7:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's my understanding that Israelis - rational ones at least - dread the thought of shutting the Israeli Arab population out of politics altogether.
The fear is, that if that were to happen, and if Palestinians stopped advocating for their own state and instead focused more on equal rights, Israel as a democratic, Jewish state would cease to exist.
September 11, 2008 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Palestinians are not Israeli citizens and do not have the right to vote in Israel. They vote for Palestinian Authority insitutions. Israeli Arabs are and have the right to vote. It should be pointed out that IIRC only about half of the Israeli Arabs vote for Arab parties, the others vote for Jewish/Zionist parties who represent their interests as well.
September 12, 2008 2:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Palestinian" is an ethnic marker as well as a nationality, and the issue of whether to identify as Israelis, Palestinians or both is a keenly debated one among Arab citizens. It would be presumptuous for any of us to tell them whether they're Palestinians or not.
September 12, 2008 7:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
voting in Israel:
there isn't even one party who looks to the interest of its public, besides the propaganda that presents itself as a public interest, but that long ago means nothing whatsoever.
.
the go-getters of government and their friends in 19-families-we own-it-all-club and the thousands around this caldron are taking care of their interests, and THERE ARE NO OTHER REAL INTERESTS TAKEN CARE BESIDES THAT. that is an absolute-and I stand behind this proposition fully.
the elections in the arabic-palestinian-israeli public are bought yearly by the big parties, and thats a well known routine. they are much more clearly disillusioned than the jewish public. so they make the best of it for the immediate peanuts by the local vote-dealers.
the only reason its like this only with the arab citizens (not in the territories! they have the right to be under siege and still expected to "behave" under the endless blows)
the messianic blunt fascists are the only ones on accord between themselves and their representatives. (Mafdal, Israel-Beiteinu), and on the bottom line they get what they expect, otherwise this whole discusion around Dr. Avishai's book would not be happening.)
the tiny "radical"-left parties are 3-5 seats out of 120 at the most, so it don't mean nothin'.
...the reasons the jewish public dosn't sell his votes is because he still has a slight hope that the demagogic crap that the bunch of idiots which keeps destroying our lives keeps barking on, maybe will have some kind of invisible connection to reality somehow.
some are more naive, some give a chance to the slim chance a promisee really meant something he said (like the farce with Amir Peretz), and others vote for what seems the least of the worst option at the time. its a tough choice between a harsh (but home manageable) food poisoning to the worst hangover.
September 12, 2008 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, barring a political miracle, a 5 percent threshold would mean next to no Arabs in the Knesset . . . and no parties specifically representing Arab interests.
One possible remedy would be preferential voting, assuming the Arab parties would be willing to exchange preferences.
September 12, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, preferential voting might work, provided that preferences could be used to reach the threshold rather than only coming into play after the threshold was passed. At a guess, this would favor either the United Arab List or Balad as the sole Arab party to enter the Knesset, and that party would be a united bloc of about 12 or 13 seats (the 10 currently held by Arab parties plus two or three from the smaller Arab factions that didn't make the threshold in 2006).
September 12, 2008 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why haven't Israeli Arabs been able to form a politically unified front?
Because they're as socially and politically heterogeneous as Israeli Jews.
Socially, excepting the Druze who are different enough to be considered a separate sector, there are four main groups: the cosmopolitan middle class centered in cities like Haifa, many (but by no means all) of whom are Christian; the much more conservative culture of the Triangle; the Galilee Arabs who are somewhat betwixt and between; and the Negev Bedouins, who are the most marginalized even by other Arabs, and are dealing with the transition from nomadic to settled life in addition to ethnic discrimination. There are also smaller groups such as the "Black Bedouins" (descended from Ottoman-era African slaves), the Dom (gypsies) and Egyptian immigrants (several thousand, mostly around Nazareth), but they aren't yet politically distinct.
Ideologically, there are Islamists who vote United Arab List, communists who vote Hadash and secular-bourgeois nationalists who vote Balad. There are also some Arabs - about a quarter of them in the last election - who vote for the mostly-Jewish parties, either out of self-identification as Israelis or because they care about issues like women's rights more than nationalism. The only two Arab women to serve in the Knesset were on Zionist party lists, although Hadash has come close, and the Palestinian-nationalist and Islamist parties tend to have a more traditional attitude toward women's issues.
Finally, the Arabs, like the Jews, have strong political personalities who have long histories with each other, and who don't always work and play well together. It's a small country.
There have been coalitions between Arab parties, as evidenced by the very name of the United Arab List (which, in its current incarnation, is an alliance between Islamists and some of the more conservative nationalists). They tend not to lsat long, though, and they don't unite the entire Arab political spectrum any more than Jewish coalition parties unite the Jewish political spectrum.
When it comes down to it, the Arabs are no more fragmented than the Jews. The largest Arab party got about a quarter of the Arab vote in 2006, and the largest Jewish party was supported by about a quarter of the Jews. Among Jewish subgroups, the far right, the religious sector and the secular left have also had a hard time uniting. But because the Arabs are a microcosm, their pieces are smaller parts of the whole.
BTW, another patronizing assumption often made about minorities is that they're monolithic.
September 11, 2008 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should add that the above explanation pertains to Israeli Arab politics now. During the era of Mapai rule in 1948-77, the situation was very different. At that time, the Arab parties were adjuncts of Mapai and were used as instruments of state control rather than genuine political participation, and their fragmentation was much more artificial and patronage-based.
The current Arab parties, though, are not descended from the Mapai-era factions. All the Arab lists in the Knesset today are products of the post-Land Day political awakening, and draw their activists from different places (mostly student politics and civil society as opposed to the municipal politicians who staffed the pre-1977 parties). Their fragmentation is based on natural constituencies.
Also, I think your default assumption that minorities should be politically unified is flawed. This assumption is only valid if ethnicity is the be-all and end-all of politics. That's true to an extent in Israel, which is why there are Arab parties to begin with, but these parties also divide strongly along ideological and cultural lines. There's no reason why an Islamist from Umm al Fahm would have the same political interests as a middle-class Christian liberal living in Tel Aviv.
September 11, 2008 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's no reason why an Islamist from Umm al Fahm would have
Make that "should be expected to have."
September 11, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This "fruit fly" approach to political parties is a serious problem. For a country that has much of its political and emotional origins in the Weimar Republic, with its fractious and fragmented political parties, one would think that Israel had learned better; modern Germany certainly has, with a threshold of 5%.
With Israel's smaller threshold, the balance of power in the Knesset is not with Labor, or Kadima, or Likud - it is with the smaller parties, the most vocal of which is an ultra-right orthodox party that is primarly represented by settlers - one of the most emotional and volatile components of Israel's current dilemmas. This is one of the main, if not the primary, reasons that Israel has been unable to find a long-term peaceful solution with Palestine.
The fragmentation of the Palestinian/Arab parties is also an issue, but perhaps the low threshold has encouraged their framentation. Imagine if there were just one Palestinian/Arab party; I assure you, all would rally behind it!
September 12, 2008 2:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tex805 said:
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This is one of the main, if not the primary, reasons that Israel has been unable to find a long-term peaceful solution with Palestine
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This is incorrect. The reason there is no peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel is because the Palestinians are not willing to agree to terms any Israeli gov't, even the most Leftist, could agree to. I find it interesting that in all discussions among "progressives" like that in TPMCAFE, everyone assumes that the Arab side has a position like their's, in other words, Israel could have peace if it wanted it, as long as it addresses the territorial issue, which is a withdrawal to the pre-67 lines.. I don't understand why none of you listen to the what the Arab side says. They say clearly, their demands are non-negotiable...withdrawal to the pre-67 lines, division of Jerusalem and Israeli's recognition AND IMPLEMENTATION of the so-called "Palestinian Right of Return". Abbas recently reiterated this point.
The political situation in Israel is not the impediment to an agreement. All the three big parties have the same position INCLUDING THE LIKUE...withdrawal more or less to the pre-67 lines, Kadima and Labor have agreed to give up Jerusalem, so has the "right-wing" Israel Beiteinu Party of Avigdor Lieberman, and the Likud will also adopt this in the future just as they have adopted all the other policies of the Left over time. So we see the problem is the political constellation in Israel, it is Arab intransigence.
September 12, 2008 2:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hendrik Hertzberg writes:
Israel's electoral system--I think I've got this right--is the ultimate in proportional representation. The whole country is one district. Voters each cast one vote, for a party list. To get into the 120-member Knesset, a party needs two per cent of the vote. Once a party has reached that threshold, it gets one seat for every 1/120th of the total national vote it has received."
For the record, the Netherlands surpasses this "ultimate" system still. No districts, just national party lists. A 150-member Parliament. And the threshold is 1/150th of the vote. If your party gets at least 0,67% of the vote, it gets a seat in parliament.
At the moment, there are 11 parties in parliament. When I grew up in the eighties, the number varied from 9-11.
There is no popular sentiment in favour of raising the floor of any significance. The small Democrats 66 were on a crusade for changing the system to a district-based system (which ironically would probably wipe the party out), but has had little reinforcement.
What has been at issue is the relatively anonymous nature of voting for national party lists and not having your own MP like the Brits do. Tinkering with the system has included lowering the threshold for an individual on a party list to be elected into parliament through "preference votes" even if he was ranked too low to make it in by his party; and primaries within parties to have the members at large elect who will head the party ticket.
But there has not been a popular push for fewer parties. In fact, voters have increasingly been abandonding the traditional main three parties and flocking to smaller parties on the margins.
September 12, 2008 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the record, the Netherlands surpasses this "ultimate" system still.
Dutch and Israeli political culture are different, though. From what I understand, and I'm willing to be proven wrong, nearly all the Dutch parties represent ideological programs rather than particular ethnic or social groups. There is thus a coherent political spectrum and the parties fall into natural alliances, although there's obviously some shifting around the edges depending on election results and political expediency.
A political system can work fairly well that way even with a large number of parties. It can also work if the system is exactly opposite, with all the parties based on sectorial constituencies - without any real ideological disagreement, parties can form alliances based on sharing the spoils, and having one's own party translates into a place at the table. A number of developing countries are run like that.
The trouble with Israel is that it has the worst of both worlds. The major parties are ideological and have a program for the future of the country. In order to form a government, though, they have to bargain with sectorial parties, who favor their own constituencies' agendas over the national interest. This means that the governing party usually has to compromise its program to the point of paralysis. It's relatively easy to put together a "blocking majority" to prevent the other side from implementing its program, but hard to implement one's own. I'd guess that, of the countries you named, Israel is closest to Belgium or Bosnia (or, God help us, Lebanon) in its dysfunctional mix of programmatic and sectorial politics.
Which leads to the other problem: that paralysis favors the right wing, because the settlers keep on settlin' regardless of whether they have formal government sanction.
What Israel might actually need - and I hesitate to say this, because I tend to oppose presidential systems elsewhere - is a strong executive with a fixed term and broad discretionary powers in foreign policy. The legislative squabbling between social groups may not be reparable.
September 12, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
'There is no mechanism by which they could be denied that right.'
Given the numerous rights that the Israeli courts have decided that they can strip from Arab Israeli citizens they have ever reason to be suspicious.
Sorry but Israel's policies are just as obnoxious as the seggregationist south: equality in name but not in practice.
Arabs are denied the right to build or extend their houses. Jews are not only allowed, they are encouraged to build in the same areas. Arabs are denied citizenship while my children who don't even know where Israel is on a map and have no Israeli parents, grandparents or great gradparents are automatically granted citizenship.
Like blacks in the US South, Israeli Arabs and Arabs living in Israel who are denied citizenship on spurious grounds have to endure hundreds of daily insults and petty discriminations that are largely invisible to those who are not affected.
That is an apartheid system. And the only reason that the US Zionist movement so hates hearing that being said is because they know that it is absolutely true.
US Zionists can ignore the situation they have helped to create because they live thousands of miles away. It is very easy to maintain ideological purity when you can ignore the consequences.
What they cannot ignore for much longer is the fact that the two state solution is dead and they helped to kill it. Hamas knows that in ten to fifteen years the number of Arabs living within the borders controlled by Israel will exceed the number of Jews. That is why they have rejected the two-state agreement and will continue to reject it. Likud also reject the two state agreement in practice because they have zero intention of ever surrendering any territory.
Rather than continuing to press for a two state 'peace settlement' that is not going to bring peace, both sides have to work out how they can live together in the same country.
That cannot be done if Israel continues a policy of 'all citizens are equal but Jews are more equal than non Jews'.
I think that most of us would agree that the US Cuban population has hardly done the people of Cuba any favors over the past fifty years. They have made the problem worse, not better. The same is true to an even greater extent for the US Irish Republican movement who for years collected money to fund the terrorist campaign of the IRA.
It is time for the US Zionists to consider whether their behvaior is doing the same to Israel.
September 12, 2008 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Henrdik Hertzberg also writes:
Most other democracies that use P.R.--including just about all of continental Europe--have a higher threshold, commonly five per cent. As a practical matter, it's almost impossible for more than four or five parties to win parliamentary seats.
This is a little overstated. It's true that full PR, without a threshold, applied to the nation-wide results, is rare; Israel and the Netherlands are exceptions. But there are many countries in Europe that have more than four or five parties; most of the time either because they have a lower threshold (3% and 4% are quite common), or because instead of using an electoral threshold, they apply full PR to results by regional district.
The case of Israel, though definitely at the high end of the range, is therefore not quite as unique or exceptional as suggested.
E.g.:
-> Albania has 9 parliamentary parties (12 if you count the constituent parties of a coalition running on a common ticket);
-> Belgium has 11 parliamentary parties;
-> Bosnia-Herzegovina has 12 parliamentary parties;
-> Bulgaria has 7 parliamentary parties and coalitions (and many more if you count the constituent parties that shared tickets as coalitions) - and this despite a 4% electoral threshold;
-> Denmark has 8 parliamentary parties from the mainland, and if you count the representatives from Greenland and the Faroer as well, it's 12;
-> Finland has 8 parliamentary parties (9 if you count the representative from the island of Aland, who has his own party);
-> Latvia has 7 parliamentary parties (despite a 5% threshold);
-> Lithuania has 7 or 8 parliamentary parties, depending on how you count;
-> The Netherlands has 11 parliamentary parties as mentioned (10 when the elections took place, but one of them split);
-> Norway has 7 parliamentary parties;
-> Serbia has 8 parliamentary parties;
-> Macedonia has 8 parliamentary parties, or a rather baffling 17 if you count the individual constituent parties that shared tickets as coalitions;
-> Slovenia has 7 parliamentary parties (9 if you count the ethnic minority representatives);
-> Spain has 10 parliamentary parties;
-> Sweden has 7 parliamentary parties;
-> Switzerland has 12 parliamentary parties.
All data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_election_results_by_country.
Some of these examples (Belgium, Bosnia, Macedonia) are obviously problematic. But the others demonstrate that even a system encompassing significantly more than 4-5 parties can function as well as any other. The list also shows that multi-party systems with a large number of parties seem to be fairly typical of multiethnic states.
September 12, 2008 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hendrik Hertzberg has the specifics of the Israeli electoral system exactly right. I was in Jerusalem when Ariel Sharon, flush with strong support inside and outside following the withdrawal from Gaza, bolted from Likud to form Kadima. Kadima didn't say much in writing about issues; their platform was, in fact, Sharon, and most of Likud's stars (pace Binyamin Netanyahu) followed their leader into the new party. When Sharon went into coma, his support in polls amounted to the equivalent of 44 Knesset members, and there is no telling how many he would have obtained in the elections. It is an open secret that, prior to Sharon's disappearance from the scene, Kadima was aiming at a radical change of the Israeli electoral system precisely to overcome the tyranny of Israel's proportional system. Under Olmert's leadership, Kadima dropped to 29 MKs. The answer to two of Hendrik Hertzberg's questions is that because of the proliferation of small parties the larger ones can't avoid entering into coalition with the small ones, and you can be certain that they will not agree to an increase of the threshhold to enter the Knesset.
Alvaro de Soto
September 12, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, preferential voting might work, provided that preferences could be used to reach the threshold rather than only coming into play after the threshold was passed. At a guess, this would favor either the United Arab List or Balad as the sole Arab party to enter the Knesset, and that party would be a united bloc of about 12 or 13 seats (the 10 currently held by Arab parties plus two or three from the smaller Arab factions that didn't make the threshold in 2006).
September 12, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink