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The impact of the 1990s institutional reforms on different aspects of the Israeli society
19/06/2004
The institutional reform has always been a feature of Israeli politics and discourse. Indeed, Israel has had until the 1990s a strictly proportional representation, in which there were very few obstacles to the party formation, and therefore, the Knesset was constituted of various little parties, hardly combinable in a government coalition. Extreme multipartism had affected governmental stability, and minor parties were having disproportionate influence on the global Israeli politics. As participation was reduced, and governmental crisis were more and more frequent, the Basic law: The Government was amended in 1992, in order to establish a more stable system, and encourage participation. First of all, we will see which reforms had been undertaken and to what purpose, then we will try to explain why those reforms missed their aims, and what were their consequences on the Israeli electoral behaviour.
Two types of reforms were undertaken, concerning two different steps of the electoral proceeding. One reform aimed to change the way candidates on the parties list were designated. To encourage participation, make the party members more active, it was decided that the parties candidates would be selected by parties members. The first party to make such a decision was Labor in 1992, followed by Likoud in 1996, just before elections for the 14th Knesset. In both parties the parties members decided of the composition and the rank of the Knesset candidate list. However, to balance the fact the lists determined by parties members could be unrepresentative, parties set up mechanisms to correct territorial or sectarian distortions ( Gideon Rahat and Reouven Hazan). Furthermore, the “reserved place” system permitted to insure minimal representation to specified social groups, often considered as discriminated, for example, women and non Jewish benefited from this system: one position over a certain number was reserved to them in party list. What were the consequences of such a change? Of course, there were some positive aspects: party membership increased, people wanted to give their choice of potential Knesset Members, and felt that they had a real impact on the parties lists which was not the case before the reform. However, one can wonder if this apparent increase of activity in party membership is a real change. It has been showed that a lot of the people who voted in the party primaries elections did not vote for this party during the elections. The massive increase of membership before the primaries was only a temporary phenomenon. Moreover, the second aim of this electorate change which was to ameliorate the competition between the party members had been a failure too. Party list used to be “closed” to new young politicians. The reform aimed to let every MK do its best to get elected, without any decision from the party itself, supporters of the reform thought that young politicians would be more promoted by this system. But, on the contrary, the competition put in relief MK who had media or economic power, and except the members who benefited from the corrective mechanism, almost no new politician had been elected. Eventually, the mechanism of corrective representation, like the one of positive discrimination in the US, failed. People usually perceived the discriminated groups as unable to succeed without any help.
The second reform was a very dramatic change in the Israeli electoral and institutional fields.
Articles 3 and 13 of the basic law: the Government set up the new electorate system for Israel. The Prime minister was designated by popular elections (two ballot system), while the Knesset composed in the same time continued to be elected by a strict list system of proportional lists. Therefore, the Israeli regime was not anymore a purely parliamentary regime, but it combines features of a parliamentary system, proportionate elections for the Knesset, with characteristics of a presidential regime, popular elections for the Prime Minister. This reform was supposed to give more power and legitimacy to the Prime Minister due to its popular acknowledgement. Supporters of the reform though that people would vote to reinforce the power of the Prime Minister they voted for. For example, someone who voted for Perez would logically vote for Labor so that the government would be coherent. But voting for one candidate and for his party was not systematic. Since the reform, people had two votes, they used the one for Prime minister to elect someone who shared their political convictions on topic like security or foreign policy. They voted for ideas. But after this vote, they felt free, for the Knesset elections, to elect a party that represented their social ore ethnic belonging, for example new immigrants party, or Arabs party… Citizens voted for little parties representing distinct social groups. The result of this reform was the opposite of what its supporters expected, it led to a fragmentation of the votes. And the Prime Minister, far from being more powerful had to cope, and bargain, with a Knesset composed of a multiplicity of small parties. The coalition was extremely diverse and hard to coordinate, the Prime Minister and the government were weakened in their making decision power, with a very bad effect on governability. Therefore, the reform was suppressed a few years later.
To conclude, the institutional reform of 1990s,provoke a new type of political behaviour, people vote for the person who represented them for the best as a Prime Minister, and voted for the party that represented their interests in the Knesset. Moreover, the very concept of politics had been changed: between MK elected on a personal data, and parties that focalised on their candidates, and no more on ideological content, the Israeli political area was looking like “gathering of interests”*, and no more like an area of political debate. The series of political crises that follow the reform proved its inefficiency, however the simple return to former situation does not solve the issue of governmental instability within the Israeli politics.
* Gideon Rahat and Reouven Hazan
Emanuelle Girsowicz
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