Is Israel long overdue for a "Constitutional Convention"? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15163409
If Israel is a ship, it is dead in the waters. Its command and control no more allows for progress. Four times in the last two years Israelis have gone to the polls to elect a new government. All three previous attempts have been short-lived. No one is holding their breath following last attempt. There are already dark mutterings of another trip- the fifth- to the polls. Problem is all signs indicate even a fifth, sixth or seventh trip may not do the trick, given the present fractures.

Is it time Irael seriously considers a Presidential system? Not just direct election of a Prime Minister, as Israel once tried. But rather the introduction of an Executive branch, equal to and independent of the Knesset. Thereby reducing the Knesset to a purely Legislative body
#15163694
wat0n wrote:It's complicated, but hasn't the same be happening in some European countries these last few years?



Maybe that is the problem: "it is complicated". Or too complicated. To the point that four elections cannot produce a stable coalition. The question which must be going through the mind of many an Israeli has to be what is the way out of the deadlock. I do not believe the fact that some European countries with same Parliamentary systems suffer the same deadlock is the answer to the quandary Israel finds herself in.
#15163714
wat0n wrote:It's not, but the solution would be similar to those done by the European Parliamentary countries.

I'd personally just include an Arab party into the coalition. But that's just me.



What European country you have in mind? The two European countries, bogged down in endless elections that yield no stable governments, that come to my mind are Greece and Italy. With the exception of Berluscuoni Italy cannot boast a stable government since WWII.

Including one of the Arab Lists will allow a coalition in Israel - left or right- to amass the 61 seats nedessary. Problem is that many Israeli Parties that would be part of any potential coalition- be it of the left or right- have vowed to not be part of any government that includes the Arab Parties.
#15163718
Juin wrote:What European country you have in mind? The two European countries, bogged down in endless elections that yield no stable governments, that come to my mind are Greece and Italy. With the exception of Berluscuoni Italy cannot boast a stable government since WWII.


Those are the chronic examples, but for instance Belgium and to some extent Spain have also been in similar situations.

Juin wrote:Including one of the Arab Lists will allow a coalition in Israel - left or right- to amass the 61 seats nedessary. Problem is that many Israeli Parties that would be part of any potential coalition- be it of the left or right- have vowed to not be part of any government that includes the Arab Parties.


Indeed, but I don't see any other way out. It's that, or national unity.
#15163797
Juin wrote:What European country you have in mind? The two European countries, bogged down in endless elections that yield no stable governments, that come to my mind are Greece and Italy. With the exception of Berluscuoni Italy cannot boast a stable government since WWII.


In Greece, in almost every election cycle parties have attempted to change the thresholds and seat allocation, after several attempts to stabilise the situation, a consensus eventually forms. The same principle applies to ideologies confronting each other on the field.

Greece has had 3 periods of constitutional crises. The 1850-1906 period when Greece had, I don't know a stupid number of governments perhaps over 100 in total. Then another crisis between 1922-1950 and again between 2010-2015. Every time progress happens until eventually the landscape stabilises and politicians learn to work with each other instead of just politicking.

I think the natural evolution way is the best way to achieve this...

In these complicated questions that have to do with power-sharing essentially there are only 2 ways to go about doing it.

1) Impose an 'excellent' constitution from the top emulating the best practices of the times from other countries. This sounds good in theory(and it is essentially what Greece did in 1828, 1850 and 1906) but in practise it always fails because a national community is an organic living thing, it does not like casts however perfect they may be. Especially in our 2 countries where there are different sub-ethnic-groups of the same ethnicity. Greece like Israel had to deal with over half of its population being a refugee(from various and distant places) for several decades, it is a feat to integrate them and their political opinions.

2) The staggered approach, maintain the status quo and make minor adjustments permitting some rope and laxity for a consensus to develop and an arrangement to grow out of the infighting, after 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 or more cycles a consensus does develop eventually and this is a more solid foundation than simply going for a constitutional re-arrangement.

Edit: One thing that can be helpful from the Greek experience is that during the electoral deadlocks the government that forms is a 'national unity' government and the PM is usually the highest judge in the country or another person of gleaming and widespread authority that all parties must consent to and they do without much hassle. The time limit of that national unity government is also prescribed.

This arrangement is pretty awesome for many reasons:

1) The public, media and the state get a break from the infighting which is healing.
2) The parties vying for power, lose their power which gives them an incentive to work together to go back to power.

Lastly, I would not worry too much about the deadlocks, governance is hardly affected and if anything they prove that democracy is working by pushing the constitution to its limits. That is regular and healthy. It is when things are sterile and too perfect that you need to start worrying.
#15164186
noemon wrote:In Greece, in almost every election cycle parties have attempted to change the thresholds and seat allocation, after several attempts to stabilise the situation, a consensus eventually forms. The same principle applies to ideologies confronting each other on the field.

Greece has had 3 periods of constitutional crises. The 1850-1906 period when Greece had, I don't know a stupid number of governments perhaps over 100 in total. Then another crisis between 1922-1950 and again between 2010-2015. Every time progress happens until eventually the landscape stabilises and politicians learn to work with each other instead of just politicking.

I think the natural evolution way is the best way to achieve this...

In these complicated questions that have to do with power-sharing essentially there are only 2 ways to go about doing it.

1) Impose an 'excellent' constitution from the top emulating the best practices of the times from other countries. This sounds good in theory(and it is essentially what Greece did in 1828, 1850 and 1906) but in practise it always fails because a national community is an organic living thing, it does not like casts however perfect they may be. Especially in our 2 countries where there are different sub-ethnic-groups of the same ethnicity. Greece like Israel had to deal with over half of its population being a refugee(from various and distant places) for several decades, it is a feat to integrate them and their political opinions.

2) The staggered approach, maintain the status quo and make minor adjustments permitting some rope and laxity for a consensus to develop and an arrangement to grow out of the infighting, after 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 or more cycles a consensus does develop eventually and this is a more solid foundation than simply going for a constitutional re-arrangement.

Edit: One thing that can be helpful from the Greek experience is that during the electoral deadlocks the government that forms is a 'national unity' government and the PM is usually the highest judge in the country or another person of gleaming and widespread authority that all parties must consent to and they do without much hassle. The time limit of that national unity government is also prescribed.

This arrangement is pretty awesome for many reasons:

1) The public, media and the state get a break from the infighting which is healing.
2) The parties vying for power, lose their power which gives them an incentive to work together to go back to power.

Lastly, I would not worry too much about the deadlocks, governance is hardly affected and if anything they prove that democracy is working by pushing the constitution to its limits. That is regular and healthy. It is when things are sterile and too perfect that you need to start worrying.



Your mastery of Greek history is quite admirable, to say the least. I am not in your league at all. <lol> And that is not because I am not Greek. I have a feeling the average Joe on the streets of Athens are not in your league either.


1. I agree with you that a Constitution imposed from above usually will not work. The reforms imposed by the Roman Dictator Sulla did not last at all.

2. Israel may still get out of the present mire. Politicians are still talking. Deals are still being cut. The last election did not do the trick. But the deck will be shuffled again, and another election, or elections down the road may break the deadlock
#15164202
The Israeli governmental system is utterly awesome. It is utterly brilliant and has performed superbly over Israel's 70 odd year history. Pure PR rocks. Israel is a massively culturally divided country, with its Arab and Muslim minorities, its extreme religious divides between the various Orthodox Groups secular Judaists and Atheists and the cultural divide between Jews from western countries, the Jews from Arab countries and the Jews from the old Soviet block. Its success is nothing short of a miracle and it extremely unlikely that it could have achieved it without this brilliant electoral governmental system.

I know its difficult but I ask people to consider this success, aside form their personal attitudes to Israel. Maybe you think Israel should never have existed. Maybe you believe that Israel was doomed to be a permanently racist from its inception, that still doesn't detract from its incredible success within its own terms.

Its funny, its considered completely politically incorrect to argue that Auschwitz was a good thing, but at the same time its considered completely fine to argue for strong executive Presidencies. But it was the strong executive Presidency that brought down the Weimar Republic and opened the road to Auschwitz. Without it the Weimar Republic would almost certainly have survived. Strong executive Presidencies are a form of fascism. Moderate fascism, fascism with a human face, but fascism none the less. And in times of crisis democracies with executive Presidencies can easily morph from weak fascism into strong fascism. Main course Democracies with a fascist executive Presidency side dish can easily morph into a fascist main course, where the democracy becomes the side dish.

The one place where Israel's democracy could be improved, is fixed term parliaments of 1 or 2 year duration. There should be no escape clause from the will of the people. When the people have delivered their verdict the elected representatives should have to live with it for the duration of the Parliament, no more no less. If there's grid lock, there's grid lock. If there's weak government, then there's weak government. That is the will of the people. If the will of the people is bitterly divided, splintered and factionalised, then the Parliament should represent that.
#15164203
Juin wrote:Is it time Irael seriously considers a Presidential system? Not just direct election of a Prime Minister, as Israel once tried. But rather the introduction of an Executive branch, equal to and independent of the Knesset. Thereby reducing the Knesset to a purely Legislative body


Short of creating an independent executive, I know of the following potential solutions:

- AFAIK Israel has 13 parties with a signifcant number of seats (!). If there are too many parties, switch to an electoral system that favors big parties. In many countries there's a voting share threshold below which parties don't get any seats. In Germany for example there's a 5% threshold. Another option is to use multi-member districts instead of party lists. For example Ireland has 3- to 5-member districts, consequently it has about 7 relevant parties, with 3 significantly larger than the others. With single member districts you tend to get a 2-party system. The downside is that small minority parties are excluded and new innovative parties are less likely to emerge.

- Form a minority government. This seems to be relatively common in Scandinavian countries. It requires the opposition parties to be constructive though and not just block everything the government does. I don't know how realistic that is in Israel.

- Since I live there, in Switzerland there's a permanent grand coalition at the national level, meaning there's a 7-seat executive council with parties getting seats according to their strength in parliament. The candidates of the parties have to be confirmed by a majority in parliament though, which didn't always go smoothly in the past. Decisions in the executive council are made by voting. The downside is that it's difficult to assign responsibility if the government fucks up.
#15164204
Rugoz wrote:AFAIK Israel has 13 parties with a significant number of seats (!). If there are too many parties,

13 parties is not too many if anything its too few. Low information, low intelligence voters can just vote for one of the biggest 2, if they are too stupid or too lazy to get minimal information about 13 parties. most of the 13 parties can be quickly dismissed as a voting option, and then one can find out more, keep up to date with the 2, 3 or 4 parties that have some level of alignment with one's world view.

Rugoz wrote:The downside is that it's difficult to assign responsibility if the government fucks up.

The facile obsession of assigning responsibility is ignorant low intelligence politics. Outcomes can only be judged through ideological perspective. The obsession with responsibility is frankly moronic. For example take Lyndon Johnson's management of the military and foreign policy. there might be wide spread agreement that, Johnson should get poor grade for his CV going forward, if he was applying for other executive positions, but it tells us nothing useful in term of politics. What we need to know is should we be supporting the South Vietnamese government at all, if so should we provide direct military support, should we have enlarged the war? Should we have widened the war? Should targeting have been more restricted? Less restrictive? Should we have ground troops? If so should we have conscripts? And so on, a host of other questions. This needs political parties formed around ideological groupings, which develop political programmes founded on their ideological outlook.
#15164212
Beren wrote:It's a great system that keeps the top executive running the gauntlet endlessly. :lol:


PM's corrupt, I wish they got rid of him. Maybe an Executive Branch might sort it out.

Since I'm trying hard to avoid such topics, this is my only post in this thread.
#15164228
Israel used to have no legal threshold (meaning the effective one was something like 1/120) but right now they have a 3-4% threshold in place. They should raise it, as some of us advocated at the time.

A Presidential system seems like an overly invasive solution when there are others that are less so (plus their direct election for PM experiment was a fiasco).
#15164354
Rich wrote:The Israeli governmental system is utterly awesome. It is utterly brilliant and has performed superbly over Israel's 70 odd year history. Pure PR rocks. Israel is a massively culturally divided country, with its Arab and Muslim minorities, its extreme religious divides between the various Orthodox Groups secular Judaists and Atheists and the cultural divide between Jews from western countries, the Jews from Arab countries and the Jews from the old Soviet block. Its success is nothing short of a miracle and it extremely unlikely that it could have achieved it without this brilliant electoral governmental system.



I am not sure "awesome" is word apt to describe human political systems. Political systems are always a work in progress. A format that works in one generation may not work in another generation. And even when a political system is working at its best it is hard to score it above say a B+, as there will always be a disgruntled few who want more changes. The accolade "awesome" suggests attainment almost of a utopia.

It is definitely not a question of knocking down the Israeli Parliamentary system. It has managed to permit a governing system over decades that merits it high scores given the diversity of groups it has to manage that you listed.

Yet you cannot avoid the present crisis. The Knesset is not just there to be there. It has legislative and executive roles to play. It was expected from inception to be able to cobble together a coalition that can deliver a stable executive for the duration of what is there the length of a term. For two years, after four elections, it has been unable to do that.
#15164355
Rich wrote:I know its difficult but I ask people to consider this success, aside from their personal attitudes to Israel. Maybe you think Israel should never have existed. Maybe you believe that Israel was doomed to be a permanently racist from its inception, that still doesn't detract from its incredible success within its own terms.




I do not know where you get all that from. Is the Israeli political system so perfect in your view that any commentary questioning whether adjustments, given its repeated recent failures to deliver a stable executive, amounts to anti Israel animus? Provoked by a rejection of a State for Jews? And I am not sure what racism has to do with it. Unless there is something I am not seeing, it seems what we have there is a case of Jewish Israelis fractured to the extent that their votes cannot lead to a stable governing coalition.

And dont you read Israeli papers? It is full of bafflements as to what it will take to get a stable governing coalition
#15164364
Rich wrote:Its funny, its considered completely politically incorrect to argue that Auschwitz was a good thing, but at the same time its considered completely fine to argue for strong executive Presidencies. But it was the strong executive Presidency that brought down the Weimar Republic and opened the road to Auschwitz. Without it the Weimar Republic would almost certainly have survived. Strong executive Presidencies are a form of fascism. Moderate fascism, fascism with a human face, but fascism none the less. And in times of crisis democracies with executive Presidencies can easily morph from weak fascism into strong fascism. Main course Democracies with a fascist executive Presidency side dish can easily morph into a fascist main course, where the democracy becomes the side dish.



I have to disagree with you that the Weimar Constitution provided for a strong Executive. As a matter of fact it was a two headed hydra: a President and a Chancellor. The President was elected for seven years, but his functions was limited to Commander in Chief of Armed Forces and Foreign Policy. The Chancellor- if the Reichstag could agree on one- controlled the rest of government; but could be unceremoniously booted by the President. Looking closely at the Weimar set up it looks mighty similar to the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic. With the exception that I am not sure the French President can fire his Prime Minister.

I am not sure I find a two headed executive satisfactory.

As an example of the weaknesses of Parliamentary democracies look to the Fourth French Republic. There was never any stable executive to prepare the nation for the looming crisis with rising Nazi Germany. Right up to the eve of the German assault the Fourth French Republic could not put together an effective Executive. They were still squabbling with each other as the Nazi panzers overran them.
#15164368
Rich wrote:The one place where Israel's democracy could be improved, is fixed term parliaments of 1 or 2 year duration. There should be no escape clause from the will of the people. When the people have delivered their verdict the elected representatives should have to live with it for the duration of the Parliament, no more no less. If there's grid lock, there's grid lock. If there's weak government, then there's weak government. That is the will of the people. If the will of the people is bitterly divided, splintered and factionalised, then the Parliament should represent that.




There is a contradiction of sorts here. The will of the people is that their elected members of the Knesset form a stable, functioning executive. If the members of the Knesset are unable to do that, I cannot see how that is the will of the people

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