| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: February 12, 2025.] Russ Roberts: Today is February 12th, 2025, and my guest is Rachel Gur of Reichman University. She has served in senior positions in the Israeli government, including Legislation Adviser to the Knesset Coalition Chairman, Senior Adviser to the Deputy Foreign Minister. Rachel was Director of Public Policy for Lobby 99. Rachel, welcome to EconTalk. Rachel Gur: Thank you very much. |
| 1:00 | Russ Roberts: Our topic is the peculiar and sometimes problematic and sometimes controversial Israeli system of government. It's a democracy--the only one in the Middle East. We have no constitution. Before October 7th, there was very controversial judicial reform that could only happen in Israel, and the fight over that. And, that set in motion here a conversation about what democracy is that goes beyond the of this country. I think there are similar issues about the role of the judiciary and the power of other branches of government that's coming to the United States soon, or maybe is already here, in February of 2025. I thought it would be useful to explore the fundamentals of the Israeli system and consider some of the incentives that produces. And, I think that'll give us some insights into the nature of democracy. So, let's start with the basics. What kind of government do we have here? What kind of system is it? Rachel Gur: So, yes, Israel is a parliamentary democracy, which is actually the most common form of government around the world. Though it is very dissimilar from the U.S. system, and perhaps it's one of the reasons that many an American audience kind of look at us oddly. Israel is what you call--if we use our exact term--we're a parliamentary, single-constituency, party-list, proportional-representation electoral system. So, that's a bit of a mouthful, but basically what it means is that we have one house--that we don't have an upper legislature or lower legislature--and we have one house. We have 120 MKs [Members of Knesset], and they are elected vis-a-vis party lists, i.e.,-- Russ Roberts: And, the MK is Member of Knesset [pronunciation for readers: the "K" in Knesset is pronounced, not silent. So: ke-ness'-et]. Knesset is the Hebrew word for Parliament--essentially a gathering. Rachel Gur: Correct, it's MK. It's actually interesting why we have 120, which is it's a throwback to the Second Temple period, where there was a Council of Elders that had 120 members. And, that's actually how we got to the number of 120. Which [?] as a sign is a bit of a problem, because there were not nearly as many citizens in the Second Temple period of ancient Judea as there are today in modern Israel. And, one of the many frustrations with the Israeli system of government is that ironically there are actually too few MKs--too few members of Knesset or MPs [Members of Parliament]. If you look at a European or other parliamentary democracy of similar size--we have currently about 8 million Israelis who can vote. And, we will have--can vote at the moment or potentially will have the vote when they come of age--we will soon hit 10 million. And, if you look at other European countries of similar size, we should have somewhere between 300, 350, even up to 400 MKs. So, although the historical throwback or mention is romantic and is fascinating, like many things with Israel, and especially the Israeli democracy raises the question whether that it is relevant today and whether it is an effective form of governance. So, what we said was we have party-list systems. So, it basically means that Israelis don't vote directly for anyone who represents them, at least not on the national level. On the municipal level, it's a bit more direct, but even then not much. And they basically--when in Israeli goes into the voting booth, they vote for the party. They don't vote for a specific individual. The head of the party's name might be on the ballot, but they're voting for the party. And, the party list is made up either by an internal vote of the party members in a primary; or what's become much, much, much more common in the last decade, the parties are simply appointed by the head of the party. So, basically, what we've seen over the last 10 years is that the internal democratic mechanisms of all of the major parties have been phased out. And, if we're looking at difficulties within a democratic system, I would start from that. Russ Roberts: But that party list--so when you walk into the voting booth, which I've had the privilege of doing since I moved here four years ago--before I moved here there was an election every few weeks, it felt like; now there's been a relative period of stability. But, when you walk into the booth, there's a piece of paper you can choose with the party's name on it, and you put it into a cardboard box. It's very old school. Rachel Gur: It's very old school. It actually comes out of one of our videos, in one of our famous cultural movies called Sallah Shabati, in which he mocks the Israeli system and how easily it can be turned because it's basically little paper ballots. It actually is little paper ballots that you stuff into a little paper envelope and then you put it in a big cardboard box. I mean, it looks more like an election in a middle school-- Russ Roberts: Yeah, that's what it looks like-- Rachel Gur: than modern democracy. But, yeah, that is still the way we do it. |
| 6:16 | Russ Roberts: So then, each party gets a particular proportion of the vote. And there's a threshold, but we'll get to that in a minute. But, if you cross the threshold--you get a significant enough proportion of the votes--you get a proportion of the 120 seats. And, that means that your list--they go down the list--and once they get to that number of seats, everyone above that is in the Knesset--in the Parliament--and those below it are not in. And, those parties that don't hit the threshold aren't in. So when--that list is extremely important. And, I assume, as you point out, there are not as many or rarely now primaries within parties to determine who is on the list. It's just picked. But, that list of who is picked, there must be a lot of jockeying for position. Because if you don't--it doesn't matter what number you are on the list once you're in, but if you're below the threshold number, you're not in. Rachel Gur: Correct. I would say the list number is really problematic for two reasons. One is the fact that we are appointed on a list as opposed to having--we have no geographic elections: we have no representation in that sense. Israeli MPs don't have a district. For example, if you're a British MP and you're very popular within your home district, you can oppose your own party leader. Right? Because you have your own independent base of power; and you have a specific demographic, a specific group of people to whom you are answerable. In Israel, unfortunately for MPs, that's not the case. You can't say I am--there is a little bit of geographic representation as in the sense that in some of the major parties, they have slots that are saved for immigrants, women, someone who represents the South, the North, kind of the Central district. But those are voluntary positions. And once you've been elected, you can't be re-elected as the representative of the North or the South. So, obviously, there's very little incentive for you to actually in fact be their representative. So, that's the first problem with the party list: is that in the end, you're not answerable to anyone. And you have very limited independence. And, that is indeed the second problem. When people talk about the lack of balance of power between the Executive and the Legislature in Israel, generally what they're talking about is the fact that the Legislature appoints the government, right? We have 120 MKs, of which about approximately 30 to 40 become the Government, the Cabinet, the Ministers, while still simultaneously serving as Members of the Knesset. That's changed a little bit in the past decade with what's called the Norwegian Law, but not significantly. And, that's often the reason that Israel is criticized for a lack of clear balance or clear checks-and-balances between the Legislature and the Executive, because essentially the Legislature appoints the Executive. But, I think that that's a misnomer because that is more or less the way all Parliamentary Democracies work, to a greater or lesser extent. So, while that may be an oddity to the American eye or to the French eye, that is not the issue. I think the greater issue is that in essence, the Executive appoints the Legislature in Israel, right? Because who is in the Executive? Those are the heads of the parties who are making up the party lists, who are the one and only person who will decide if you, Junior MP, make it into the next Knesset or not. Right? So, how are you supposed to check your boss, basically, when you are in the Legislature and they are in the Executive? And, that creates a problem. So, we have a Legislature who appoints an Executive; an Executive who appoints a Legislature. And, this incestuous loop often loops out the public. And therein lies the issue. |
| 10:05 | Russ Roberts: And, you said they're not accountable. Well, they're not accountable in the traditional way we think of with a geographic representation to voters, but they are accountable, weirdly or maybe positively, to the head of the party. And, it's interesting because in America it felt for a long time that there was some diversity within the party because of that geographical representation. But, American parties have become much more party-line, akin to what we're talking about in Israel. The Republicans have maybe two centrist/Left, slightly Left-leaning members in the Senate, in Collins and Murkowski. But, in general, the Republican Party votes as a bloc. Similarly, the Democratic Party, which used to have conservative members in days of old--like Henry Jackson, say, or others--they're generally can't get elected within the Democratic Party for whatever reason; and now the Democrats generally vote as a bloc. There are exceptions--are people right on the edge. And when there are close issues, those differences matter. But, it's interesting that in America it has become, de facto, more of a party system than I think it used to be. But, here in Israel, it's a party system, and you are only really accountable to the leader of your party. And if you stand up to that person, you risk being left off--you're going to be left off the list the next time. So, what that tends to lead to in Israel is a proliferation of parties. When people break with the Prime Minister, they go and often form their own party. Rachel Gur: A hundred percent. I mean, in fact, if you look at the Israeli political system today, the majority of the mid-sized parties, like Bennett presumably will return to politics, or Lieberman, or Gideon Sa'ar, or to some extent Benny Gantz, right? The people who are running the major parties are all people who have had a personal falling out with Benjamin Netanyahu, and as a result, have formed their own parties. Starting with Yisrael Beiteinu--Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu was the first. But this has become a trend in which we have--with the exception of the Arab parties and in the traditional center/center-left parties like Labor or Meretz--the majority of the Israeli political system is consistent of Netanyahu and those Netanyahu used to employ and has isolated or fallen out with over the years. So, it's a deeply personal political system. Russ Roberts: Yeah, that, too. But, it's worth pointing out that in the early days of Israel, for decades, the left-leaning party, Labor, ran the country--meaning the Prime Minister was a Labor person. And, that changes as the country--in the aftermath really of the 1973 war and the failures, the country starts to move a little bit to the right. And, in recent years, the country has moved very much to the right. So, the jockeying for position is often within the right. So, the proliferation of parties that are important are divisions within the right-of-center parties. And, I should just mention one more thing--and you can comment on it--left and right here in Israel, very different from left and right in, say, America. The overwhelming issue for the last 20 or 30 years is security--how we relate to our Palestinian neighbors and our neighbors in other countries who are often either hostile or at least at best lukewarm in their relationship with Israel. And so, it's not the standard social issues and economic issues. They're sometimes relevant; and they're also sometimes reverse, as some people have pointed out to me. When I got here, the Tel Aviv high-tech community is much more pro-capitalist than the right-wing subsidized the ultra-orthodox parties, which are interested in a big welfare state. And, that's a flip-- Rachel Gur: There's actually a fair amount of pluralism even within the ultra-orthodox parties, which is interesting. There are parts that lean left, let's say, economically. There are parts that lean, let's say, right economically. There are parts that lean left--for example, Aryeh Deri, a leader of the Shas Party, a phenomenon within the world of Haredi politics--he's been a kingmaker for almost 30 years now--is personally identified politically in terms of security, questions of security and foreign affairs, as a left-winger. While, the Haredi public as a whole, especially younger generation, has kind of slid right in their own opinions when it comes to questions of security. Russ Roberts: Haredi, being the-- Rachel Gur: the ultra-orthodox-- Russ Roberts: ultra-orthodox parties here that get subsidized by the state. There aren't many of the ultra-orthodox are essentially on welfare. They're not required to serve in the army, and that is an incredibly contentious issue here right now, in the middle of this war--there's a lot of jockeying and threats, etc. Rachel Gur: It's incredibly contentious. I would note though that a great deal of the Shas voters--the Haredi world, like any other world, has an enormous amount of real and vivid internal politics. And, those who are represented within the Shas Party, many, many, many of them do serve. Not comparable to the rates of the general public or the religious Zionist public, but many do serve. As opposed, for example, to UJT [Yahadut HaTora, United Torah Judaism], or what they call the Ashkenazi--the other half of the Haredi world--which serves in much, much, much lower numbers. So, even within the Haredi world, there is a spectrum. Russ Roberts: So, finishing up this sort of basics part, we've got an Executive--the Prime Minister. We have a Parliament--one body that has no geographical representation. And, we have a Judicial Branch. And, maybe we'll get to the issues of the relation between the Judicial and the Legislative branch. And, as I said, I think, earlier, there's no constitution, so that complicates things. Rachel Gur: There's no formal constitution. Russ Roberts: Right? There's an informal, but-- Rachel Gur: The laws that were sort of maybe recognized starting in the mid-nineties, retroactively, as a kind of a [?prec?] constitution or a pre-constitution or having constitutional status--it depends who you ask and what time of day you ask it at. But, no, there was no formal constitution: certainly nothing similar to the American model of one single document that creates--a founding document from a founding father. Russ Roberts: Israel was supposed to get a constitution. It was promised in the establishment of the state. That can got kicked down the road. And, 75 years now, 76 years into the country's history, it might be good to have one, but that's another conversation. There are democracies that don't have them. There are authoritarian states that have them that don't use them in any real way. The Soviets had a constitution that they just ignored most of, but it sounded good. England does not have a constitution. They're a vibrant democracy. |
| 18:33 | Russ Roberts: But, let's talk about how a government gets formed in this world. Because, I mentioned earlier that in the early days of the state, the Labor Party--left-leaning party, the founders of the state, many were from the left--they were dominant. They had a large group of voters who liked them. And then, there were voters on the right who had a right-leaning party. But, now there's no single party, partly because of the splintering that we talked about within the Netanyahu ecosystem. The right--the name for Netanyahu's party is Likud--the Likud Party does not have 50-plus percent of the vote in a long time. And so, what that means is a coalition has to be formed that has at least 60 members--61 or more. So, talk about how the coalition gets formed and the jockeying that takes place in that. Rachel Gur: [?] So, first of all, in Israel you only almost-only ever have a plurality. Not since the early days of the state has any single party won an actual absolute majority, which in this case would be a majority of the 120 seats. So, i.e., you've got to have 61. So, in Israel, we are always looking at a plurality. And, perhaps what's interesting is that the party that forms the--and this kind of highlights how important personal politics and coalition building is in the Israeli system--which is that the largest party is often, but not necessarily, the party that forms the government. If you recall, there were the elections of, I believe it was in 2000 and--let me think, I think it was 2013, [inaudible, a few words in Hebrew, 00:20:25], when Tzipi Livni actually became the largest party. Her party, Kadima, at the time had one seat above Likud, which was then run by Netanyahu as it is today. But, she couldn't find partners that would bring her over the 61 threshold. And, in the end she had to basically abdicate the mandate that's given by the President. It's one of the President's--the President in Israel is a largely ceremonial role. And, that's kind of one of the few points of actual involvement in the political system, where the President gives the Party Leader in the Knesset--not the largest, not the leader of the largest party, but the leader of the party most likely to be able to form a coalition--the mandate to form a government. So, again, kind of the wheeling and dealing is not just a formality: it is really essential to the Israeli political system. And I would also say, I think that's part of what leads to--there's a lot of disenfranchisement. I think this happens in the United States as well over the last, at least 10 years, maybe 15 years, where a lot of people feel very frustrated with the political system. They feel that they vote, but they don't get what they voted for. They vote, but their votes don't influence, they don't hold--like, they're unable through a voting mechanism to get the government that they hoped for or to hold their political leaders accountable. There's a growing sense of frustration. Which I think is, in Israel--and not just in Israel, but a larger global phenomenon as is the move rightwards, which is a global phenomenon, which Israel is part of. But, yes, what happens is, is basically you form a government; and you do that by one of two measures. One is money and the second is positions. So, the head of the largest party or the party that is spearheading the negotiations then sits down at the negotiating table with generally two, three, even four or five partners. And, what they do is they offer them a bit or a block or a portion of the sovereignty of the nation in return for their participation within the government. So, they offer them positions in government. And, the larger the party or the more important the partner party, the better or the more prestigious positions they'll be offered. Most prestigious being a Minister of Finance or a Minister of Justice, right? These are very senior positions which have--a Minister of Defense in Israel is critical. These are kind of positions that have independent power sources or independent bases. They control the largest ministries, the largest budgets. And so, an ideal system: The head of the major party--the party that's going to put forth the Prime Minister--would want to keep those positions within their own party. But, the reality is different: You need to bring in your partners. And so, you do that by giving them ministries and giving them positions. And you also do that by giving them money--what's called coalition money. So, in Israel we have a budget. The budget is tightly controlled--much more so [?than?] in the United States. We're a small country; we don't have the luxury of enormous deficit. And, one of the lessons learned from the runaway inflation of the 1980s is very tight control by the Treasury--a professional level of the Treasury, not the political level of the national budget. And, every item in that budget is closely scrutinized. But--and then you get to the asterisk--you have the coalition money. Coalition money is money that is allotted from the Treasury, generally not to the parties, but to organizations that the party is a patron of. Right? So, if we're in the religious Zionist world or in Haredi world, this would be NGOs [Non-government Organizations] or generally educational institutions, military prep institutions. We're talking about religious Zionists, yeshivot, or, these institutions of higher education or lifelong education that the ultra-orthodox world is part of. It can be day schools, it could be community centers, it really could be almost anything. Russ Roberts: It's interesting: you're mentioning this, because in the United States right now, there's this huge fight over-- Russ Roberts: Yeah, DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, saying, 'Well, this'-- Rachel Gur: We have DOGE on steroids. Russ Roberts: Well, kind of reversed. Well, we're kind of reversed. Rachel Gur: In reverse, right? We're not cutting, we're giving. Russ Roberts: Yeah, because USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] has become--this week was the issue, I don't know what's going to happen there--but DOGE and Trump and Elon Musk have been railing against all these NGOs who are getting funded by government. Raising the point that: to what extent are they a non-governmental organization? Right? An NGO is a--in theory, a nonprofit that serves a public purpose, but it's not part of the government: it's non-governmental. But of course, if its funding is overwhelmingly from government budgets, it's kind of a shadow government organization. But, here in Israel, that's standard procedure. Rachel Gur: Yeah. I would even go more so. We have huge education--I mean, there's huge parts of the ultra-orthodox world that, without government funding, fall apart. I mean, it's not even a majority: it's everything. It's 90-plus percent of the funding. And that is coalition money. I would note, perhaps--to raise a question--I know that this sort of thing has become very unpopular in the United States--I actually think the coalition money, ironically, is a positive thing for the Israeli democracy. And, I think it's a positive thing because, well, I guess, in Israel, any problem you can solve with money is a small problem, an easy problem to some extent. We live in a difficult region, and problems you can solve with money are somewhat easier. But also, because I think it creates buy-in. When the Haredi parties--when the ultra-orthodox parties--started becoming part of the inner workings, the wheeling and the dealing of the Israeli system 20, 30 years ago, their populations were largely detached from the general Israeli public. Their children didn't necessarily speak Hebrew: many spoke Yiddish. Right? They learned in their separate schools. They worked--in-as-much as they worked--in a separate environment. They didn't have a press system or newspapers or television or internet sites that covered the workings of the Israeli government or the society in general. And, today that has completely and utterly revolutionized. I mean, if you want to see a free kicking, screaming, biting, free press, you go to the Haredi world. It is cruel and critical and brilliant in its ability to follow, analyze, and pick apart Israeli society and politics. And, now mainstream Israeli society is in the house. Whether it's in print or the Internet, and yes, they have computers in much greater percentages than one would realize, or whether it's podcasts or radio shows, the money, the coalition money has brought political buy-in from the parties, but it has also bought a cultural buy-in from the man on the street. And, I think that it would be very, very hard for the Haredi subsections of society to backpedal that and become less interwoven into the general Israeli society. And, that's what gives me hope for the question of the draft that you mentioned earlier. I think in the end, they can't backpedal. And, we will see, whether it'll be in five years or in 10 years or in less than that, we will see a--and here I'm predicting the future, which is always a tricky thing--but I think that we will see a huge uptick in Haredi enlistment in the Israeli army, whether it's in specific subsections, whether it's more in the medical field. You know what I'm saying? No question that it'll have to be adapted at some point, but the start of that process is in the coalition money. |
| 29:20 | Russ Roberts: So, I'm not quite as romantic as you are, Rachel, but I want to make your case a little bit and then--at least I want to try to just make sure I understand it. And then, I want to just raise some general issues of incentives that an economist would. The negative way to say what you're saying is that when there's a trough that you can feed at, you're going to pay more attention to where it is and how it's set up and what it's made out of and when it's open to the folks. Rachel Gur: It creates dependency in the end. Russ Roberts: Yeah, which is a big-- Rachel Gur: There's a difference between--once you cross the line into dependency, then maybe you're no longer milking the system, but the system owns you. Russ Roberts: Yeah. So, the part I agree with you is that it has encouraged and incentivized engagement. And so, people in that world--which is alien to most of our listeners, but this is the ultra-orthodox--Rachel was saying they have more computers than you think. Traditionally they're not Amish--to use an American example--but they're something like the Amish. They have a suspicion of certain technologies. They try to stay separate from the modern world to some extent, if not a large extent. And so they tend not to watch as much television or be on the Internet to use smartphones. But, times are changing, and as you point out, some of that is a result of the political process and the way they've become connected to it that they were not connected before. But, I want to think more generally about the coalition because it's such an alien concept to most of our listeners. So, if you think about it, you've got a plurality: you don't have a majority. And so, you've got to gather other parties and their seats. You've got to patch together that 61-plus coalition. And so, what you're doing is you're offering goodies--that's the part you've emphasized--you have to offer goodies to those folks to come into your party, because by definition, they stand for something slightly different from you. That's why they had a separate party. And so, you're forced, by this coalition process and the plurality rather than a majority, to offer them things. And they in turn have to compromise and accept a partnership with folks that are not quite like them. The other thing that's going on, though, that I just going to emphasize as an economist looking at this as a newcomer from the outside, is: of course they're in competition with each other to have access to those goodies. So, in some situations they can demand a lot because they are going to be essentially the group that puts the coalition over the top. But, in other situations, there's alternatives for the plurality party to choose from--for Netanyahu to choose from--and you won't get those goodies. And so, you'll accept a lesser cabinet role, for example; or you might accept a smaller amount of money. So, the competition that in, say, America takes place at the ballot box or in the primaries over the jockeying for which parties--excuse me--which attitudes, which policy positions are going to get centrality, is taking place in this weird--at least an outsider, a newcomer--this sort of alien jockeying for position. Rachel Gur: It's an alien backroom with zero transparency to the public. Russ Roberts: That, too. Yeah. Rachel Gur: A hundred percent. Coalition agreements are published and they are published on the Knesset website. But, as the Supreme Court ruled back in the early days, in a seminal ruling, that although they are agreements--i.e., they look like contracts--they are not in any sense enforceable. Russ Roberts: It's a handshake deal. Rachel Gur: Exactly, it's a handshake deal. And yes, that has been brought to the court by one party, claiming that another party didn't fulfill their obligation. And, the court basically said, 'This is between you guys.' Russ Roberts: And that, of course: if you don't honor your commitments, it becomes harder to get future people to join in with you. And, that's one of the reasons Netanyahu has lost so many proteges and friends, is they felt he didn't keep his deal. So they went off and did their own thing. Rachel Gur: Politics is people. In a large country; and in a small country, all the more so. You can't get more personal. |
| 33:53 | Russ Roberts: So, let's talk about a very interesting aspect of the system that, for an economist or political scientist, is fascinating. Which is: the threshold. So, when Israel was first started, you only had to get 1% of the vote to get on the--to get into the Knesset. To get representation. Rachel Gur: Up until 1992, you only needed 1% of the vote. Correct. Russ Roberts: And so, what that did--of course--is that it encouraged splintering and lots of parties, and everyone--people didn't like that. It meant that a coalition often had to patch together numerous members to get to 61-plus. And, it also of course meant that there was a lot more competition among those members to get into that situation. But, in 1992, they raised it to 2%. And then, in 2014, I think, they raised it to three and a quarter. So, right now-- Rachel Gur: Wait: In 2004, they actually raised it to 2%. In 2014 to three and a quarter [inaudible]. And, at the time the idea was to get up to four or even above. It never happened. But the hope--the arc--that it was some very well-meaning political scientists of an American background who completely missed the mark when it comes to-- Russ Roberts: Be careful what you-- Rachel Gur: a parliamentary democracy. But, yeah, that was the idea, was to stabilize this chaotic coalition system to help build large parties so they wouldn't be prey to manipulation, extortion, on the part of kind of very small parties that were able to control resources that was not proportional to their representation within the general society. And so, that was the idea. The big jump--the seminal jump--is, as you said, was 2014, from 2% to 3.5%. Russ Roberts: Three and a quarter, I think. Rachel Gur: Yeah, 3.25%. Correct. Russ Roberts: So, as a result of that change, it meant that if your party--the person and party you voted for--got, say, 3%, which is not a small--seems like kind of a large number--your vote essentially doesn't count. In America, people will often lament third-party voting, which I voted for many times in the past, for third-parties in America. And, people say, 'Well, you're throwing your vote away.' Well, I said, 'Your vote doesn't count so much when you vote for one of the two major parties, either.' You know: you're not breaking a tie. But in Israel, what it means is there will be a large collection of people with strong passion or interest for a particular issue that that party represents; and they do not get a seat in the Knesset. Which means that all the other people who got over the three-and-a-quarter get, effectively, your vote--your share, and-- Rachel Gur: Exactly. It's actually worse than having your vote being thrown out, right?-- Russ Roberts: It's true-- Rachel Gur: If you vote for a third party and your third party doesn't make it in, then basically they just shred your vote. Right? But in Israel, the way it works is it's a percentage, right? You need 3.25 percent of the vote to get in. So, if your party doesn't get in, your votes are essentially redistributed between the parties that did make it into the Knesset. And, the way the algorithm works--it's a bit complicated--but the way it works is that it heavily favors the large parties. Which basically means that your seats are redistributed to your competition. Right? So, for example, in January, 2023, Meretz drops below--this is the last election--below the threshold list, which is a far-left or center-left party, assuming where you fall on that spectrum. And their seats are redistributed between the major parties. And, the way it ends up working out is Ben-Gvir, the far-right, actually ends up with an additional seat that more or less is the people who wanted to vote for the far-left. And, he inherits those votes. And, obviously, that is a source of enormous frustration within the Israeli political system; and, the necessity to game the system so that you are above the threshold and don't fall below it. And if you fall below, don't give your seats--right?--to your ideological opposition, has become a kind of a founding strategic principle of the Israeli system. And you look back at this--let's just go back a second. The purpose of this well-meaning and well-intended reform was to stabilize the system. And, as you said, it passed in 2014; and it actually had almost entirely an opposite effect of just completely destabilizing the Israeli system. We start seeing that effect coming into place in 2019, when we go into the first of a maddening series--this must've been when he came to Israel--of five re-elections. And what it starts with is: in April, 2019, Naftali Bennett, who was running on it was called the New Right Party then, it falls just, just, just under the threshold with 3.24% of the vote. Okay? So, it's maddeningly close. And, in fact, when all those votes are tallied out, he short about 5,000 votes. Which is, I mean, it's the blink of an eye. It's nothing, right? They then re-tally the votes. You have to recalculate and it goes down to 3.22. But, the point stands: it's incredibly close. And in that same election, the Joint List--the Joint Arab List, which is Rahman Balad, which unites the Islamist and the national secularist parties of the Arab electorate--they clear the threshold, but with 3.33% of the vote. So, again, they squeak in, and this is, I mean, it's eight hundredths of a point between those who fall below and those who go above. And, the differences, again, it's a couple thousand votes in either direction. And, because of that, the majority party, or at least the largest party of the time--which is the Likud, led by Netanyahu--because of that and because of various internal politics and fracturing within the right or within the center of those who are willing to enter into a coalition with Netanyahu and not, he's unable to cobble together a coalition. And, it's [?] to say that if Bennett had crossed the threshold and Rahman Balad had not--if those 5,000 votes had swung in a different direction--then Israeli politics--it's one of those forks in the road: it would have forked in a different direction and we would be today in a radically different place. But, history is history, and because you can't cobble together the coalition, we go to a second round of votes, and then to a third, fourth, and a fifth, until in the end you create an essentially the Bennett-Lapid government, which ousts Netanyahu for about a year, a year and a bit, before Netanyahu comes back in the 2023 elections. But, actually, I think that the big difference, the kind of the re-shaping of the Israeli strategic political mind, wasn't in those very frustrating periods of five votes, which had enormous economic fallout--because there was no budget and the budget hadn't been passed, and the workings of government screeched gradually and then faster to a halt over the course of that period. And, obviously, that adversely affected hundreds of thousands of individual citizens. But, there was also a strategic difference, which was--and here you have to give credit to Netanyahu; not only, but mostly to Netanyahu; I think he was one of the first to see it--was that in a system where parties hover so close to the threshold, where such a small number of votes, several thousand votes, I mean, really a handful of thousands of votes can swing an election to one direction or another, the way to win or the way to ensure that you win is to bring out electorates that have traditionally been felt disenfranchised, have been less interested in voting, i.e., people who are on the extremes of the political system. And, Netanyahu saw that first in 2019, and he went through a process of, let's say, rehabilitating the far-right party, of which Ben-Gvir is the main representative. But, this kind of [?], very far-right faction that had been taboo for the decades before. |
| 42:52 | Russ Roberts: But, my understanding is he also did something--besides encouraging them to come out and vote, he also literally made a deal with some of the parties on the far-right. People in America who don't follow Israeli politics think that Netanyahu is this far-right figure. He's actually much closer to the center than-- Rachel Gur: He's actually the left wing of his own coalition. Russ Roberts: Yeah, his own coalition. But, he's taken in--Ben-Gvir is the most visible, some Americans will have heard of him--the most saber-rattling and hard-line person in Netanyahu's coalition. And, he made a deal with his party and another party, got them to essentially unite in their electoral--it's a weird law, I understand, where they could count their votes together to get above the threshold, and then they get some sort of independent promise from him about what reward they'd get. And, the left did not-- Rachel Gur: Yeah, they merge. They run [?as a?] bloc, but they remain separate parties so they can disintegrate without having the party be ruled illegal afterwards. It's like a party conglomerate, confederation of parties. Russ Roberts: Yeah. And, he saw that, and the left decided either if they found it distasteful to do that confederation, or Lapid, who Netanyahu's opponent, didn't have that pre-election strategy to get them to merge, to offer them something in advance. And, as a result, we have Netanyahu, who seems to be, what's the right word? Rachel Gur: He is a king of Israeli politics. The pendulum swings right, it swings left, and Netanyahu has been able to--he has--his political instincts are phenomenal. Russ Roberts: But, he's doing this, and here we are, we're in a war. He is under indictment. He--again, very similar parallels to the United States: a person who is a lightning rod, where public opinion, people either despise him or love him. This person, Netanyahu, is, if he doesn't stay in office, he's very vulnerable to prosecution, people suspect. So, to some extent--and I'm an amateur here and I don't want to overstate it--but to some extent he is beholden to Ben-Gvir, who is very unrepresentative of the Israeli public. I don't know-- Rachel Gur: I would even go farther and say: I mean, Ben-Gvir is the better known--also because he's extremely verbal--of Netanyahu's kind of new partners. But, he also brought in people who are much farther out there in terms of the Israeli public opinion. For example, Noam, which is a proudly and vocally homophobic party that has a platform that opposes gay people, that is in favor of conversion therapy, that has really beyond distasteful--in my mind--views regarding people with disabilities. Russ Roberts: However, those folks have not had their agenda effectuated in any way in this current world. Rachel Gur: They do not have their agenda effectuated, but they do have the representatives in a political party and in senior political appointments in a way that has never been. Russ Roberts: Fair enough. But, I'd say, right now, in this moment, Ben-Gvir's hawkishness with respect, say, to Gaza, the willingness to negotiate a ceasefire hostage deal is disproportionate: his power is disproportionate to his support within the Israeli public. But, he's very powerful because he potentially can bring down the government, or with others bring down the government. And, that's the strange part of this parliamentary system. |
| 47:08 | Russ Roberts: So, why don't we turn to the question of how a government can fail before the election? So, once you're elected-- Rachel Gur: [?] I'm sorry, go ahead. Russ Roberts: No, I was going to say once you're elected, in theory, the next election is four years away. Is that correct? Rachel Gur: Yes, that is correct in theory. I would just go back a bit. You mentioned--you asked the question; I think it's an interesting question--why Lapid didn't do something similar? Why didn't the left kind of create a similar conglomerate of parties and make it over the threshold, right? Because the left lost a lot of votes. I mean, Meretz didn't make it over the threshold. And, that's a huge--as we mentioned--a huge loss in the 2023 elections. And, I think that the answer is in the cultural DNA [Deoxyribonucleic acid] of each party. One of the sources of strength of Netanyahu specifically, but the Likud in more generally, is the loyalty to the party leader. Likud has only ever had four leaders since its inception at the beginning of the state, and all four were Prime Ministers. Russ Roberts: Wow. Rachel Gur: And you can criticize--the critics of Likud will use all sorts of derogatory terminology, calling them sheep and, 'They'll vote regardless,' and, 'They don't think.' But loyalty--party loyalty--is an incredibly powerful thing, because it allows you to make unpopular decisions, whether they're unpopular to the general public or unpopular within your own party. And, that doesn't exist at all within the left. The Labor, for example, recycles their head--I mean, on almost an annual basis. And, that creates an internal destabilizer, which makes it very, very hard to go to unpopular or conciliatory or any sort of accommodation, whether it's within the left bloc, creating a conglomerate, or whether it's within policy for the country in general. So, these little bits of DNA, right? These cultural things, they have far-reaching effect within the Israeli electorate, within the Israeli political body. And, that's why it's important to understand a bit more kind of what happens behind the scenes and what people are feeling and thinking, because then what seems like a very chaotic system, suddenly makes a lot more sense. Russ Roberts: So, in this period of the last 16 months--well, in the aftermath of October 7th--there were a number of times where coalition members threatened to bolt and bring down the government, which would have precipitated an election before the normal four-year period. Which, again, is something different than many other--let's say in America. But, it didn't happen. And, how could it happen and how likely is it that it can happen that someone would leave-- Rachel Gur: I think much less likely. Russ Roberts: Say again? Rachel Gur: It's actually much less likely than commonly believed. Israeli leaders, one of their famous lines--or popular lines, especially when we speak to Americans--is: 'I can't do that because my government will collapse,' or 'I'm going to lose this partner or that partner.' It's much harder to bring down an Israeli government. And, that's reform that came through in the past few years, which basically says, in order to advance a no-confidence vote--i.e., to say that the ruling coalition no longer has a majority of the Parliament--it's not enough to simply vote against the ruling coalition, i.e., to say we no longer have confidence in them. We have to actually present to the Members of Parliament, to the MKs, an alternative, right? It's what's called a constructive no-confidence vote. And, that is, in a political system, to vote against is easy. To agree on who you're voting for is much, much more complicated. I would also say even before that reform came into effect, there's only one, maybe two instances in the history of Israel in which a government has fallen a over no-confidence vote. So, although there is a lot of talk of it and it's often used as an excuse to get out of under the thumb of forced to make unpopular decisions or take unpopular stances, and certainly often an excuse that's thrown to the American President, whoever the American president may be, if the Israeli Prime Minister is not interested in playing ball in whatever capacity is on the table: it's actually much, much, much less common. In fact, it almost never happens--you can really find--and the few instances are in the early years of the State. What is much, much, much more common is that the government--as you well know, Israeli governments rarely make it to their full four-year session. You've been here long enough to know that elections here are a vacation day, and we like vacation days. We like to have them as many as possible. So, what does actually bring down the Israeli government? And, that is the budget, for the most part. In Israel, you have to pass an annual budget. You can vote on a bi-annual budget, i.e., and that gives you an extra year of breathing room; but if there is no budget, the Knesset automatically dissolves. And, that's really important because at the moment we're in a new financial year, 2025, and there is no budget yet. So, if the Knesset doesn't manage to ratify the budget by March 31st, the government automatically dissolves. And, that has been the coalition dissolution point of preferred note. It doesn't require for anyone to actively vote against the coalition, which is often--although the leaders of the party might be interested in doing that, it's often very unpopular. And the base--the average citizen--is frustrated with the instability of the Israeli political system and often doesn't see the things that the leaders see as being so egregious that they need to pull out or they need to topple the government, is often not shared by the average citizen, for a large variety of reasons. So, generally speaking, what brings down the government is a lack of agreement over the budget. And, this actually brings us back kind of full circle to the coalition agreements. Because, what is the budget? The budget is--once again, it's divided-up sovereignty through financial mechanisms. It's who gets how much money, where, when, and how. Now--unlike the coalition agreements and the coalition monies--here, there's very careful oversight over that or at least much more oversight over those monies. There's also oversight of the coalition monies, but it's more compartmentalized. Here, there's full oversight. But still, the budget is an opportunity to decide what your priorities are as a sovereign state and as a leader. And, that disagreement over--what forms the government is the agreement of how you divide up the money. And generally, what brings down the government is disagreement as to how you divide up that same pie further down the road. And, that is what will most likely--if this government falls apart, then we'll fall apart over that. We will hit March 31st without a ratified budget, and then the Knesset will automatically dissolve and we will go to elections in July. Russ Roberts: Well, we'll see. |
| 55:52 | Russ Roberts: I want to close with talking a little bit about the future and maybe just a little bit of utopian imagination. So, as you said, the future is hard to predict. I would never have imagined--I didn't think Trump would win the first time. Of course, once he lost, I knew he would never be nominated again. And then, if he's nominated again, he's not going to win. So, I was wrong at least three times. On October 8th and shortly thereafter of 2023, I was of course certain that maybe Netanyahu had no political future and that everyone associated with October 7th would be not in the public eye anymore. Rachel Gur: I think everyone agreed with you on that last one. Agreement from wall to wall. I also thought there was no future. And here we are. Russ Roberts: Here we are. And, he is a phoenix, Mr. Netanyahu. He rises from all kinds of ashes. And it's really quite extraordinary. We'll see what the future holds. But what I want you to think about is: if you could change something about the Israeli political system, anything, what would be the change you would make? if any? Maybe you like it the way it is. Rachel Gur: Actually, I do like it the way it is. I am in that minority. I think that the chaotic--at first, I would never, never, never move from a parliamentary system to a presidential system similar to the American model. A presidential system in many ways is much simpler. It's easier to get things done, right? You have your king--in the term of the president--and they have executive power. And that creates a simplicity--or at least as an outsider perspective--it seems. I am sure as an insider perspective, it's much more complicated. But, I think that the fructitious and--is not somewhat--incredibly chaotic parliamentary system of Israel, is: it is reflective of the population in general. I think in that sense, it is a vibrant and effective democracy, as in: we are a society that is united, divided, chaotic all at the same time. And, our political system is reflective of that. And, it is a place where all of those divisions--that that divides us and that that binds us--can be hashed out in front of the cameras. I think the Knesset is interested in the fact that it's probably one of the few institutions in the entire country, public or private, where people from the far-left and the far-right, where the ultra-orthodox and the Arab parties, and the integrationists and the anti-integrationists, and the center all sit in a room and yell at each other. And, that has value. And, out of that frustration and out of that interaction also come partnerships and also create legislation that is beneficial to the average citizen. For example, when I was in the Knesset--and this is almost 10 years ago--one of the large pieces of legislation--this has been debated recently--whether it was a good idea or a bad idea, was a law to indemnify the consumer if commercial flights are canceled or late so that they can receive some sort of indemnity or some sort of insurance policy. And, that was a bill that was pushed forward by Ahmad Tibi, an Arab MK from a non-integrationist, anti-Zionist party. And, it was pushed through with the support of all of the major Zionist parties. So, the Knesset is a melting pot not in the sense that people come out similar, but in the sense that they do interact and they do reflect the interests and the needs of their various populations. So, I do think that something works, within the cacophony. What I would do is I would add, I would double, even triple the number of MKs. The system simply doesn't work. When Israel was founded, you had about half a million people who had the right to vote or the potential of the right to vote. Today, within the next decade, we're potentially going to hit the 10 million mark. If not within the next decade, then a bit after that. And, you simply can't put the weight of that population on the same 120 number. And, that is a vastly unpopular move within Israel. There is a view that politicians are people who are useless, and feckless, and don't work anyhow. So, the last thing in the world we need is to fund more of them off the public purse. But, I do think that that would create a greater accountability and cause a greater specialization. You have to remember, in the Knesset we have--let's say we have 80 members of Knesset who are in fact members of Knesset and not part of the Executive. We have 15 standing committees, statutory committees, committees created by law that have to be in the Knesset, in addition to a whole series of ad hoc--you know, established a deal with specific issues or to give specific mandates. And, what happens is that you have 40 members, more or less, a part of the opposition; 40 a part of the coalition. So, that is their job is the legislatures: it's the makings and the details of parliamentary rule. And, because there's only 40 of them and we have 15 standing committees, they are members of three to five committees at the same time. Each of those committees meet simultaneously. And so, you find yourself running from eight o'clock in Banking Reform, to nine o'clock the Welfare System, to 10 o'clock should we attack in Aza[?Gaza?] after the new rockets? To, 11 o'clock, what's going on with the light rail and why isn't it being built? And, during that time, you've been missing, at each hour, at least three to five similarly important and critical debates. And so, it's just--as I would say, after too many new MKs or Members of Parliament after years and the Knesset, doesn't matter--you could have been the head of the best tactical op team and then gone on to do a doctorate in economics in Harvard and in medicine at Yale: You will fail as an MK. It is an impossible job. It cannot be won. And so, I think we need to rebuild the system so that, kind of more similar to the American model, you can have one committee where you are most invested, where you can create specialization, where you can deeply learn the issues that are involved. Just as a point, an average member of Congress can have dozens of aides, depending on what exactly their position is and what the weight of the responsibilities are within the legislative process. In Israel, traditionally, Members of Parliament had two aides, one of which was their driver. And, about a decade ago it was raised to three. It was this was huge thing: Now you can have three, right? So, you can have the driver, who is also the secretary; and the person who does your kind of political party; and then you have one person who also has to do all the legislature. And, that's just not--I understand in Israel we always like to do everything on a shoestring budget, right? Maybe we have DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency--recently created U.S. efficiency-oversight agency] in our blood, right? We have a deep frustration with anything that, maybe it goes back to our early socialist days, that anything that looks like it is fanciful or wasteful or-- Russ Roberts: Luxurious-- Rachel Gur: Luxurious, right, in any ways. But, with all that in mind, you can't run a country of 10 million people with 120 MKs and two and a half aides. It's just not viable. Russ Roberts: So, I was going to say: Israel has a very large public sector, so the DOGE in its blood is a different kind of DOGE. |
| 1:03:15 | Russ Roberts: But, the point I want to close with is how democracies work, in particular how minorities and majorities get a voice. And, when you look from the outside--when I was growing up and looking at Israel from the United States--this chaos you're talking about looks extremely unattractive. The collapse of coalitions or the inability to form a coalition, or the splintering of all these small parties that can use their power in this coalition-building we're talking about to get influence way beyond their means, way beyond their actual proportion in the population. So, that's the downside of this parliamentary system. The upside--which is harder to remember--is that in America, because there are really only two parties, effectively, minority positions within those parties get nothing. So, if you--just to take a random example--if you are, say, a free marketer--as I have been most of my life--in the United States, the Republican Party pays lip service to free-market ideas. But, there's really not a base for those views within the Party. There's jockeying for position over time. Sometimes you get a more-or-less free-market candidate. But, there's no real power for that base. That base is small, those of us who are more free-market. And, because we're small, we get nothing. The threshold is quite effectively much more than 3%. It's something much larger. And, now we have a President in the United States, a Republican who--not free-market oriented. His has already imposed tariffs and done things that free marketers don't like. Some things free marketers do like, but I don't think that's because of his, quote, "free market" principles. But, my point is, is that: within the Israeli system, if you're part of a viewpoint that has 3.25% behind it, you can get into Knesset. You can, in theory, be part of a coalition and therefore get a goody--either some power to affect policy in the direction you want or resources to achieve things you care about. And so, that system, in a funny way, for all that chaos, in a way gives a more--is in many ways more democratic even though it struggles to sometimes stay in place. And, I had not thought about that much before I came here and before our conversation, so it's very interesting to me. Rachel Gur: I completely agree. And also, I would say that's why I would be in favor of lowering the threshold, you know, and creating less of an obstacle. For example, if we looped back to the question of the ultra-Orthodox, there are streams within the ultra-Orthodox that are in favor of joining the military. And, in my mind it's more important joining the economic and the tax base of the Israeli system. They exist, but they are at the moment too small to cross the threshold. But, if that threshold were to fall--and it wouldn't even have to fall that much: let's say you could keep a threshold 1%, 1.5%, even 2%--then these new voices would squeak into the Parliament and they would be amplified on the national and perhaps even on the global stage. So, yes, it is chaotic. But it is very much a participatory democracy. And, whether it's on the part of the citizen or citizen groups or interest groups, that's an interesting thing we can talk about another time. That was where my organization, the Lobby 99, the public lobby was founded. But, it was founded exactly on that principle, was that the ordinary citizen, if they organize, can, at least in the Israeli system, be incredibly influential. Because, within that chaos is an openness to a participatory system of creating policy, where really anybody who has expertise and time can come and be part of that legislative process. It's kind of an old-school democracy. We're not quite like the Swiss, where we kind of go out onto the hill and raise our hands in favor. But it is certainly a much more hands-on than the vast American system, and even then most European systems of comparable size, comparable population size. And so, it's an exciting place to be. It's a fun place to do politics. And, it's a place where, if you get involved--and that's true of almost anyone--you can garner a significant influence and the ability to create real change. And I think that that, in the end, is the sort of buy-in you need to keep a democracy healthy and happy. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Rachel Gur. Rachel, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Rachel Gur: Pleasure. Thank you. |
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East but it seems a lot more alien and chaotic than many of the older democracies of the West. Hear Rachel Gur of Reichman University explain to EconTalk's Russ Roberts how the Israeli political system works and sometimes, doesn't work. The conversation brings into relief the challenges all democracies face and the ways that political minorities can wield power or be ignored depending on the political rules of the game.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Leonard Knapp
Mar 3 2025 at 6:56am
No, Israel is not the only democracy in the Middle East.
Like Iran, it has a parliamentary system.
Like Iran, it has a mechanism for ensuring that only regime-approved parties are allowed to run candidates for election.
Like Iran, it has censorship of the press.
If Israel is a democracy, Iran is as well.
Russ Roberts
Mar 3 2025 at 8:01am
Not sure what you mean, Thomas.
Ha’aretz, a newspaper here in Israel relentlessly criticizes the government and Netanyahu.
The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is filled with parties and members who are hostile to the government and Netanyahu.
Netanyahu, the Prime Minister is under trial for corruption, and can like other Israeli politicians who have been put on trial, can go to jail.
I don’t see the comparison. Happy to read something that claims otherwise.
Peter
Mar 3 2025 at 2:57pm
I believe Russ he was taking offense at the characterization Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East from the synopsis above; I can’t say if in the episode it supports that claim as I’ll listen to it later this week as I always do at the gym but I had the same initial vitriol gut reaction if so.
Turkey, Iran, and Egypt are all normative democracies, nominally so is Lebanon, Iraq, and Tunisia. Now you can make the argument “well those aren’t in the Middle East” but they are colloquially and politically speaking Israel is considered part of Europe, just ask US EUCOM among others.
Kevin Ryan
Mar 3 2025 at 2:43pm
An interesting discussion alright. Although an episode musing on improving political systems seems to me a great candidate for bringing up both the ‘only trade-offs, no solutions’ and ‘the curious task …’ quotes
Jimmy Ruble
Mar 3 2025 at 11:14pm
Israel is not the only democracy in the Middle East. A quick Google search reveals that Lebanon and Iraq are parliamentary democracies with regular elections.
Those two countries are also not involved in a genocide or starting wars over land that isn’t theirs.
Russ Roberts
Mar 4 2025 at 8:41am
Perhaps I used the word democracy carelessly. Perhaps I should have said “functional democracy” or “effective democracy.” Definitions are elastic, of course. In 2006, Hamas won an election in Gaza. On October 7 2023, they tried to commit a genocide and their representatives have eagerly spoken of doing a more thorough job in the future. And they started a war over land that isn’t theirs. Is Gaza a democracy?
J Mann
Mar 4 2025 at 9:41am
The “Is Israel the only functioning democracy in the Middle East” mostly tells you something about what the speaker means by “functioning democracy” and “Middle East,” which is interesting, but it’s not surprising that people disagree.
Lebanon is an instructive case. They have elections, but Hezbollah is in effective control of many areas of the county. If we agree on the facts, I’m OK with someone calling a functional democracy or not a functional democracy.
For what it’s worth, V Dem lists Lebanon as the second most democratic country in the Middle East, but classifies them as an “Electoral Autocracy.”
Shalom Freedman
Mar 4 2025 at 10:15am
I learned a lot from this conversation about the Israeli system of democracy including the criticism that the Knesset has too few members. Rachel Gur did not speak about a criticism often made of recent Knesset members that they are not of the moral and intellectual quality of those of the original Knesset. In those days there were giants in the earth and today of far diminished stature.
Kevin Ryan
Mar 5 2025 at 6:12pm
I’m sure the same criticism about the poor quality of ‘MK’s could be made in many other countries, (including the UK where I live).
Although Rachel initially based the argument for more members on Israel’s population size, it later became apparent that a more substantial argument was based on the need to ‘man’ parliamentary committees. From a distance it is impossible to know how worthwhile this work is in practice, and consequently whether increasing the number of MKs to fill the committees’ membership is worth doing (especially if the quality of the additional MKs is questionable)
neil21
Mar 5 2025 at 12:04pm
I would welcome a similar episode for the United States of America.
Headlines suggest my simple understanding is out of date.
neil21
Mar 5 2025 at 3:59pm
Although more seriously, I’d love an episode on Miran and the Mar-a-Lago accord. Doesn’t seem to be anywhere near mainstream understanding.
https://www.aei.org/economics/council-of-economic-advisors-chair-nominee-stephen-mirans-critique-of-the-global-monetary-system-part-i/
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-economic-masterplan-unherd/
Some Other Tom
Mar 6 2025 at 3:05pm
One of the things I don’t think Gur discussed was how parties choose their leaders, particularly the longer-lasting ones. If party leaders have that much ability to choose the coalition partners and dispense favors to supporters, then it seems like that’s a particularly important point of competition, and made me curious how e.g. Likud chose its leader and if/how that had changed over time. Thinking of another country whose political history I once studied, Japan’s LDP was in power continuously from 1955 to 1993, but had a number of internal factions and the ruling PM was determined by that inter-factional rivalry.