Bernard Lewis describes the weaknesses of Israel's electoral system. Yes, they're the only functioning democracy in the Middle East and that democracy has survived through major wars and a constant state of hostilities since its founding. But they sure came up with a doozy of a system.
This system of voting by lists is the source of many of the difficulties which plague Israeli public life. In the English-speaking countries -- the oldest and most stable democracies -- voting is by constituencies. The founders of the state of Israel preferred the Weimar model -- hardly an auspicious choice. Voting by lists of this kind has several harmful consequences. First, it gives undue power to relatively minor groups. They can play a crucial role in the formation and survival of coalitions. This is not a healthy way to form or end governments, or to formulate and conduct policies. It is surely significant that of all the parliaments elected since the establishment of the state, only one survived to the end of the four-year term provided by the law. All the others were broken up by internal disputes within the coalitions.Since these small splinter parties have a stranglehold on the nation's politics, reforms that would diminish their power are unlikely. They have, in effect, a fringe veto over the nation.
A significant disadvantage of the present system is that there is no direct relationship between the elected members and the electors. In the Anglo-American system, every member is directly answerable to the people of the place he represents. They watch their member's actions, and vote accordingly in the next election.
In the Israeli system, the member is only responsible to the party leadership or, worse still, to the party bureaucracy. His success or failure in the election depends less on the will of the electorate than on the place assigned to him in the party list. This is not a healthy system, and it can only encourage the corruption about which so many Israelis complain today. The Knesset would improve dramatically in quality and experience if its members, including the members of the government, were obliged to fight and win their own election and re-election by the electorate.
It's enough to, yet again, give thanks to the system created by our Founders. They might have purported to despise parties and decried the emergence of a party system, but somehow they devised a system of representation that keeps our members of Congress connected to their constituents, even though critics like Jonathan Chait might not like it, and prevents little splinter parties from determining the fate of the nation's politics.
3 comments:
We have our own "splinter candidates" that can change outcomes. Huckabee, who had little chance of winning the GOP nomination, worked a backroom deal with McCain, who was losing to Romney in WV, to throw his support to McCain, thereby winning WV for McCain and knocking Romney's chances for the nomination lower.
Some polls showed Romney with stronger support among the GOP base than McCain, which may have made him a more formidable opponent for Obama. Had Huckabee and McCain not tag-teamed Romney in WV, he may have gone on to win the GOP nomination.
The biggest problem currently our electoral system has is open primaries. Which is a party or state problem
I'd also like to see some experimentation with approval voting, myself.
Bachbone has a good point but the problem Israel has, as do most parliamentary systems, is that the party choses from within the party who can run in certain districts. There is no primary of the residents to determine which Labour or Tory candidate shall represent the district. The truly corrosive thing is that a party that has zero national appeal may still poll enough voters to pass an arbitrary percentage of voters and is guaranteed seats in the Knesset.
A similar story could have been David Duke who never got a majority in the general election to go to Congress but could have polled enough national votes to have gone if representation was determined by percentage of vote.
Our system forces the extremes of both parties, most of the time, to compromise to get their bills passed and avoid a veto. And that politician also needs to appeal to moderates and independents in his own district to remain in office. Its only in the utterly safe districts do we see the strangest of representatives. ie. Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney etc.
What is especially interesting is that some of the religious parties were violently opposed to the establishment of Israel because the Messiah had not revealed Himself. Yet they are happily ensconced in various committees and ministries as if nothing was the slightest bit inconsistent.
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