16 - WHY DIRECT ELECTION FAILED IN ISRAEL (An Võ)

WHY DIRECT ELECTION FAILED

IN ISRAEL

Emanuele Ottolenghi

Emanuele Ottolenghi is Leone Ginzburg Senior Fellow in Israeli Law, Politics and Society at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Stud-ies and at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. He wishes particularly to thank the Middle East Centre and the British Academy for the financial support which made possible the research upon which this essay is based. The essay originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Less than a decade ago, Israel became the world’s first parliamentary democracy to adopt direct popular election as the method of choosing its prime minister. The passage of this controversial reform was spurred by a three-month-long government crisis in the spring of 1990, during which Israelis looked on in shock and dismay as members of their par-liament (the 120-seat Knesset) indulged in an unprecedented public orgy of floor-crossing and unseemly bargaining, with parties and indi-vidual legislators scrambling for place, preferment, and political advantage. This episode—known ever after as “the stinking maneu-ver”—led Israelis to change their Basic Law in 1992 to require that a separate popular election of the prime minister (PM) be held concur-rently with balloting for the Knesset, although the PM’s mandate would continue to depend upon a parliamentary vote of confidence.

But the reform did not work as planned. After using it three times—in the 1996 and 1999 general elections and in the February 2001 by-elec-tion in which Ariel Sharon of Likud defeated Ehud Barak of Labor— Israel ended the experiment. In March 2001, the country reverted to a slightly modified version of the pre-1992 system for choosing its pre-mier. It will use this system in its next general elections, which are currently scheduled for November 2003.

Israel turned to direct election to counteract the fragmentation, in-stability, and immobilism that came to a head in the crisis of 1990. These maladies are often associated with proportional representation

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(PR), particularly the low-threshold Israeli variety, which allows parties winning as little as 1.5 percent of the vote to take Knesset seats.1 Yet the very effort to secure the passage of reform introduced distortions that caused it to fall short and even backfire. Much to the chagrin of reform’s supporters, the 1996 and 1999 elections each led to a troubled time of coalition building. Small parties, far from being sidelined, vied to play kingmaker. And each time the result was an awkwardly patched-to-gether coalition government with little coherence or staying power.2

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the reform was its failure to give either the Labor or the Likud leader “coattails” that his col-leagues could ride to victory in the at-large, list-based contest for the Knesset’s 120 seats. On the contrary, the system’s use of two ballots per voter (one for prime minister and one for the Knesset) encouraged ticket splitting. Many voters rejected Labor and Likud Knesset candidates, opting instead for smaller parties with sharper issue profiles, leaving the two big parties with less bargaining power than ever and increasing the fragmentation that ultimately caused the system’s undoing.

What lessons may we draw from Israel’s attempt to introduce ele-ments of presidentialism or quasi-presidentialism into its parliamentary form of government?

Direct election was premised on a number of conditions. Voting for both the PM and the Knesset was to take place on the same day, so as to maximize the prospects for prime-ministerial “coattails” and to minimize the risk of French-style “cohabitation,” in which the PM would be from a party not included in the Knesset majority. Stability would be ensured by the fact that the Knesset and the PM each had the institutional means to oust the other, but in doing so would have to face new elections as well.

To be chosen PM, a candidate would need at least 50 percent of the popular vote, with a runoff between the top two vote-getters to be held two weeks later in the event of an inconclusive first round. In the three elections under this arrangement, only two candidates for the premiership ran each time, and there was never any need for a runoff. Otherwise—and crucially—Israel’s PR system for electing Knesset members remained unchanged. It continued to be highly proportional, with a single nation-wide constituency, a low threshold of 1.5 percent, and a rigid list system.

Once certified as the winner, the new PM would have 45 days to present a list of cabinet ministers and to outline the policy direction of the new government. The Knesset would then formally have to consent to both through the familiar parliamentary mechanism of a vote of con-fidence. Lacking that, the new government would have to step down, the Knesset would dissolve, and new elections would have to occur within another 45 (later changed to 90) days.

Among the other scenarios for an early PM election envisioned by the Basic Law as amended in 1992, the most important for present pur-poses was the one in which a sitting PM could resign his premiership or

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his Knesset seat, thereby forcing a fresh PM election but leaving the existing Knesset in place. The principle of twinning prime-ministerial and parliamentary elections, in other words, had loopholes.

It is also worth noting that the final wording of the 1992 reform opted decisively for parliamentarism by making the Knesset’s vote of confidence—as opposed to the direct mandate of the voters—critical to the prime minister’s ability both to take and to hold office. The wholly independent electoral legitimacy of the executive, a sine qua non of presidentialism, played no part in Israel’s new system.3 Thus the elec-toral system for parliament, and its interaction with the direct PM election, would be key. This aspect of the reform was paid too little attention, precisely because direct election was introduced as an alter-native to more basic electoral-system change.

In order to explain why the reform took this shape, one must look at how it got passed. A study of the compromises that were needed to turn it into law sheds light on the causes of some of its worst faults, including the problem caused by the double ballot, making it possible to evaluate the system’s performance and to draw lessons from Israel’s experience for other democracies with similarly fragmented party systems.

Why Direct Election?

The adoption of direct election was part of a wider attempt to reform Israel’s political system at the beginning of the 1990s, following the series of drawn-out, PR-induced stalemates that had followed Likud’s first electoral triumph over the once-dominant Labor Party in 1977. While Labor and Likud vied for leadership, an array of smaller leftist, rightist, and religious parties began to chip away at both their voter bases. The role of these small parties as crucial makeweights in ruling coalitions grew so prominent that both Labor and Likud found them-selves hard-pressed to form stable governments.

Both the 1984 and 1988 elections were basically ties between Labor and Likud, and in each instance a government of national unity resulted. But under these governments between 1984 and 1990, Labor and Likud tied themselves in knots over the Middle East peace process, even as neither managed to create an alternative coalition with junior parties.

Both Labor and Likud declared that they would try to moderate Israel’s excruciatingly proportional electoral system (most obviously by raising the Knesset threshold and switching to constituency-based rather than nationwide PR), but the determination and growing leverage of the smaller parties doomed all such efforts. The search for alternative solu-tions was on. From some quarters came the suggestion that Israel should adopt a constructive vote of no confidence. This would mean that the Knesset would be able to bring down a government through a no-confi-dence vote only if the Knesset could, through the same vote, name a new

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prime minister and cabinet (hence the “constructive” qualifier). But this more modest reform proposal did not make headway, and with a boost from public disgust over “the stinking maneuver,” the idea of direct voting for the prime minister became the centerpiece of reformist think-ing, and eventually of the reform package that was passed in 1992.

Direct election came to the fore not as an aspect of fundamental electoral reform, but as an alternative to it—a second-best option to be pursued once the smaller parties had effectively vetoed any serious revision of PR. Reformers argued that injecting presidentialist elements into Israeli parliamentarism would dim the prospect of small-party black-mail. The big-party Knesset lists, they said, would get a boost from the popular balloting for PM, while the PM would enjoy a far larger zone of independence in the day-to-day running of government.

Under the reformers’ original plan, the Knesset would have been able to oust the PM only by means of a no-confidence motion that would need the support of at least 70 of the 120 legislators, and which would also dissolve the Knesset to make way for new elections. The reformers calcu-lated that by thus joining no-confidence to dissolution, they would tie the Knesset’s hands. Israel’s prime minister would then be free to act much like a president, making decisions without needing to keep a weather eye on the shifting moods and alliances in parliament. In particular, reformers hoped to 1) strengthen the PM’s legitimacy with a direct voter mandate; 2) ensure that changes of government would come from popular voting; and 3) reduce the size, number, and overall influence of smaller parties.

In short, the reformers hoped that direct election of the PM would produce the same results as a less proportional electoral system.

Direct election was meant to reshape the relation between the execu-tive and the legislature by giving the voters’ a direct say in the government-formation process. In the original scheme, the PM was not supposed to need a parliamentary confidence vote in order to install his government, but such a provision was added in order to ease fears that PMs might turn populist or even authoritarian. Still, reform advocates hoped that PMs would be independent enough of the Knesset to be able to appoint and remove ministers without fear of frowns from parliament.

The Struggle for Electoral Reform

As the reinstitution of the preliminary confidence vote indicates, the reform that was proposed and the reform that got passed were two very different things. Indeed, some people argue that the changes that the reform’s proponents accepted in order to secure its passage explain why the new system failed, though as we will see, the reform suffered from a more basic contradiction.

As we have seen, the serious push for direct election grew out of the crisis of 1990. Both support for and opposition to direct election cut

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across party lines: the three left-wing secular parties (Shinui, Mapam, and Ratz) tended to favor reform, although some of their members op-posed it. The ultra-Orthodox parties, which viewed themselves as targets of the reform campaign, were united in opposition. The religious Zion-ist Mafdal party, however, supported the reform. Labor was in favor, but Likud was a mixed bag: The party officially was against it, though some members, including future prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu, defied party discipline to line up behind direct election. Small parties that later were generally to benefit from the reform (such as the communist Hadash on the extreme left and Techiyah and Moledet on the extreme right) were also among its foes.

The earliest proposals for direct election had their first reading in the Knesset in May 1990. Public debate, which included extensive media and grassroots campaigning for direct election, would continue for two years. Final passage came, after much parliamentary maneuvering, on 18 March 1992.

Under intense public pressure and aggressive lobbying on behalf of direct election, the law was brought before the full Knesset for a final reading in January 1992. After a stormy session featuring accusations of obstructionism against the Speaker, the voting ended in chaos and the bill was sent back to the Constitution Committee amid bitter recrimina-tions. In the end, the amendment restoring the vote of confidence passed as part of the reform.

Likud took most of the blame for the outcome of the parliamentary debate as well as for the manner in which it was conducted. Then–prime minister Yitzhak Shamir strongly opposed direct election (apparently fearing that he would lose a head-to-head matchup against a Labor candidate). In view of this, Likud Knesset member Uriel Lynn, the reform’s principal sponsor, agreed not only to keep the vote of confi-dence but also to drop the number of votes required for a no-confidence vote from 70 to 61 and to delay the application of the new law until the 1996 elections. With these changes allaying some of their worst fears, Likud’s leaders allowed a free vote, and the amended reform package became law five days before the end of the spring session.

The political circumstances surrounding these amendments and the final passage of the law help to explain why it failed. Despite the lengthy debate, a critical element of the reform—namely, the requirement that the PM would have to obtain the Knesset’s confidence—was introduced at the eleventh hour, with almost no discussion of its implications.4 Reform backers hoped that the four-year delay in implementation would leave time to make further changes, and that the Knesset to be chosen in June 1992 would have more members committed to direct election. But these hopes never materialized. The Yitzhak Rabin–led Labor govern-ment that came out of the June 1992 elections had little interest in the issue, and efforts at further amendment went nowhere. The law that the

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Knesset had approved in March 1992 would carry Israel through the 1996 and 1999 elections.

The Results of Reform

Adopted to counter the problems of fragmentation, small parties with outsized clout, and governmental paralysis, the new institutional setup backfired. The centrifugalism of voting patterns for the Knesset under the new system dashed hopes that the specters of coalition crises and early elections could be exorcised, and the executive remained hamstrung in its ability to forge ahead with coherent policies on controversial issues.

In addition, the stabilizing effect that reformers hoped would flow from the threat of early elections was limited to the early part of a PM’s mandate. As the term wore on and scheduled elections drew closer, restless coalition partners would become more likely to leave and force an early vote.

And what of the other results that supporters of the 1992 reform hoped to achieve? Let us run through these one by one in order to see how the reforms actually fared, comparing the outcomes under direct election with what happened during the last election held under the old system, in June 1992.

1. The legitimacy of the prime minister. Direct election, it was said, would give Israel’s prime minister the kind of legitimacy that the previ-ous system simply did not provide, due to the fragmented nature of parliament. In 1996, Netanyahu won by the slimmest of margins, 50.4 to

6. percent. In 1999, however, Ehud Barak’s direct legitimacy was indisputable: he beat Netanyahu by 12 points, 56 to 44 percent. Yet barely 21 months later, Barak was ousted by current prime minister Ariel Sharon, who won more than 63 percent in an election heavily conditioned by the ongoing al-Aqsa Intifadah and the lowest turnout in Israel’s electoral history (59.9 percent). Three elections in five years (when the full tenure is four) hardly sounds like stability.

Being able to claim a direct popular mandate doubtless made the PM stronger, but party fragmentation continued to make this strength often more notional than real. The PM could easily appear, in Giovanni Sartori’s phrase, “a general without an army,” as he sought to impose coherence and discipline on small parties—or even individual members—armed with strong views, claims of their own to direct voter support, and the knowledge that their exit from the PM’s coalition could bring his gov-ernment down.

2. Popular voting as the only method of changing governments. In reaction against the notorious intraparliamentary horse trading of 1990, the 1992 reform enshrined the idea that a government must be always as much as possible a direct expression of popular will. Since low-thresh-old PR tends to fracture the legislative expression of that will, the

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reformers wanted to plant in basic law the rule that the legislative branch and the now-to-be-directly-elected executive branch would have to enter and leave office at the same time.

In other words, the new system required that any change of majority within the Knesset (something conceivable in the framework of a multi-party parliamentary system ruled by coalitions) be endorsed by popular vote. Moreover, the system transferred the power to choose a PM from the parties to the voting public, with parties relegated to the role of putting candidates forward to receive the popular verdict.

The 1992 reform no doubt achieved this goal, but at a price. Arranging matters such that any coalition crisis triggers elections can be a recipe for drift and paralysis as disparate coalition partners, united mainly by an urge to stay in power, settle on “not rocking the boat” as the best survival strategy. Thus direct election channeled power to the people and away from horse-trading elites, but at the cost of energy in the executive.

The irony in all this, as the record shows, is that inaction has actually not been a good survival strategy for Israeli governments. Differences of political allegiance aside, the coalitions put together by all three directly elected PMs—Netanyahu, Barak, and Sharon—all resemble one another. Each man had to contend with the same pair of tensions that cut across his coalition: the cleavages between secular and religious parties, and between hawks and doves on the peace process. It was hard for each of these PMs to act on matters touching these divisions without causing rifts within his own household.

Yet given the separate ballot for the Knesset and the low threshold, no PM could choose an alternate and more viable coalition. Instead, each was forced to work with an inherently unstable government that could not readily face up to tough decisions on thorny issues such as the state and religion or dealings with the Palestinians. In short, the system produced instability because it shaped a political landscape that prevented the PM from governing.

3) Fewer and weaker small parties. The reduction in the number of parties in parliament—especially the smaller ones—and the strengthen-ing of the major parties was to have been ensured by the devoutly wished-for but chimerical “coattail effect.” Reform advocates expected that Labor and Likud candidates for PM would act as vote-getters in Knesset races too, carrying members of their respective parties along with them on their electoral “coattails” much as U.S. presidential candidates are said to do in congressional races. In turn, a streamlined party system was expected to foster more coherent and hence stabler coalitions.

In fact, only a mechanism that forces upon the voter a consistent choice for both parliament and prime minister will prevent people from splitting their ticket. The introduction of a two-ballot system created no incentive for voters to select either Labor or Likud over some smaller (but perhaps to the voter ideologically more congenial) party in the

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voting for parliament. In the event, voters in both 1996 and 1999 did shy away from Labor and Likud on the parliamentary ballot, and a bevy of smaller parties picked up seats.

Reformers should have realized that a double ballot promotes ticket splitting, yet they downplayed or even ignored this strong possibility. In the wake of increased fragmentation and instability, supporters of reform defended it by suggesting that direct election was not the cause. On the contrary, they said, the weakening of Labor and Likud and the rise of small parties flowed from trends dating back to the 1980s. Had direct election not been adopted, they added, the system would have been even less stable.5

While flagging partisan loyalties and voter “dealignment” have in-deed been facts of political life in Israel (as throughout the West) for the last several decades, a reform that aims at enhancing stability should be designed to encourage voters to choose parties closer to the center of the spectrum. But as political scientists Gideon Doron and Michael Harris explain:

the reformers neglected to consider . . . [that] changing the rules may also change the way individuals think and act, which will then make results deviate from expectations. . . . The voters actually became more likely to vote for the smaller parties for Knesset, thereby continuing to limit the ability of the prime minister to govern.6

Direct election did in fact foster a centripetal trend, but only in vot-ing for prime minister. In Israel’s highly polarized, fragmented, and far from homogeneous system, no such trend in Knesset voting should ever have been taken for granted. Hence the odd spectacle of campaigns in which the two major parties and their standardbearers touted their centrism while voters with parliamentary ballots in hand looked for smaller and sharply ideological parties unafraid to take strong stands on controversial issues. Consequently, while the majoritarian principle underlying direct election of the PM impelled the electorate to choose between two seemingly moderate options, the proportional principle at work in the parliamentary elections pulled the very same voters in pre-cisely the opposite direction.

While long-run structural factors certainly play a big role in the de-cline of Labor and Likud, the double ballot exacerbated this trend, as the 1996 and 1999 election results show. In 1992, under the old system, Labor won 34.6 percent of the vote and 44 seats (up from 39 in 1988), while Likud mustered just under 25 percent and dropped from 40 to 32 seats. In 1996, Likud’s Netanyahu won the prime ministership directly with 50.4 percent while his party list, which included also the Gesher and Tsomet parties and controlled 40 seats going in, garnered just over 25 percent and lost 8 seats. In May 1999, Netanyahu lost the race for prime minister with just under 44 percent, while Likud posted an all-

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TABLE—PARTIES AND SEATS IN KNESSET ELECTIONS, 1981–99
ELECTION		NO. OF KNESSET SEATS			NO. OF PARTIES IN
	LABOR		LIKUD	OTHERS	GOVERNING COALITION
1981	47		48	25	5
1984	44		41	35	6
1988	39		40	41	6
1992	44		32	44	3
1996	34		32*	54	6
1999	26†		19	75	7

* In 1996 Likud ran on a joint list with two other parties, Gesher and Tzomet, that controlled 10 of the 32 seats.

† In 1999 Labor ran under the name of One Israel, a joint listing including Meimad and Gesher. Labor controlled 23 seats.

time low of barely more than 14 percent and 19 seats. Throughout this period, smaller parties to Likud’s right made steady gains.

Labor suffered similar setbacks under direct election. In 1996, Shimon Peres barely lost with 49.6 percent while Labor’s Knesset share dropped to 26.8 percent and 34 seats. Thus neither side enjoyed a “coattail” effect in 1996. The gainers were the peripheral parties. Arab parties, for instance, went from three to nine seats between 1988 and 1996. The 1999 elections confirmed the trend of big-party decline. Ehud Barak won a hefty 56 percent, but his three-party “One Israel” coalition man-aged only 20 percent and 26 seats. Of these, Labor controlled 23, down 11 seats from 1996, despite its victory in the prime minister’s race.

The “coattail” effect, if there was one, was the opposite of what the reformers had predicted. The number of parties in the Knesset grew, going from 10 in 1992 to 13 in 1996 and 15 in 1999.7 And this growth occurred despite the 1991 raising of the Knesset threshold from 1 to 1.5 percent—a reform that had been enacted to keep “one-person lists” out after the number of parties in the Knesset had reached 15 in 1988. It is clear that by enabling voters to express two choices on election day, direct election cut the number of strategic votes cast for either Labor or Likud as a parliamentary party.

This development also explains why forming majority coalitions became harder. In 1992, Labor had 44 seats and needed an additional 17 to reach the magic number of 61. In 1996, Likud had 32 seats and needed 29 more. In 1999, Labor found itself with 26, and needed 35 more. When Ariel Sharon took over after his landslide by-election win in February 2001, he faced the same Knesset elected in 1999 and had to start building a coalition around a Likud bloc of just 19 seats. Obvi-ously, a prime minister who needs the support of at least 42 more legis-lators in a 15-party parliament will have to “shop for votes” among a disparate array of parties, and will wind up with a wobbly, tension-ridden coalition. The structural shortcomings of such a system are plain.

From 1992 to 1999, the number of so-called center parties, which are ready to join any winner of the PM race, rose from three (with a total of

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16 seats) to six (with 38 seats in all). Religious parties, seen by many as the ones making the heaviest demands in the coalition-formation pro-cess, increased their representation steadily from 16 seats in 1992, to 23 in 1996, and 27 in 1999.8 Sectarian and ethnic lists also flourished, as did single-issue parties. As already mentioned, Arab parties went from an aggregate of 5 seats in 1992 to 9 in 1996 and 10 in 1999. A lone Russian-immigrant party won 7 seats in 1996. Three years later, a pair of such parties won 10 seats between them. The single-issue Third Way party (in favor of retaining the Golan Heights) won 4 seats in 1996. Though the party disappeared in 1999, its middle-of-the-road appeal was taken over by the Centre Party and the secular Shinui (6 seats each).

The fragmentation of the party system made it ever harder to build and maintain coalitions. Proponents of direct election had argued that the new system would prevent a repeat of the 1990 fiasco. Direct elec-tion would ensure that on election night there would be a clear winner with whom all parties would have to deal. There would be no shuttling back and forth between Labor and Likud, as in 1990, when parties and legislators played both sides in order to exact the highest political “price” for their support.

But the record of Israel’s experience under direct election tells an-other story. In 1992, Rabin managed to present a three-party government 23 days after election day. Four years later, Netanyahu needed 21 days to forge an eight-party coalition. In 1999, Barak took 51 days to present a seven-party coalition. Sharon’s seven-party national-unity govern-ment won a confidence vote 30 days after the 2001 elections. In short, the presence of a “clear winner” PM whose prospective cabinet was “the only game in town” did little or nothing to streamline coalition nego-tiations. Indeed, coalitions grew even bigger and more awkward.

The need to “pay off” more coalition partners with cabinet seats and funding for their pet programs or offices produced higher public spend-ing and shifted more resources to these smaller parties, making them stronger than ever. Thus despite the PM’s notional prominence, parti-san dynamics and the stern arithmetic of coalition maintenance often forced him to dance to the smaller parties’ tunes.

Coalitions can handle a degree of ideological distance among part-ners, all of whom must weigh the costs of compromise against the re-wards of power. Direct election (as the annual budget marathons attest) stretched this feature of coalition government to its limits. The sheer cost—in time, trouble, and state funds—of holding disparate coalition governments together sapped the executive’s ability to tackle pressing political issues. What makes the problem particularly difficult in Israel is the sheer fragmentation of the Knesset. In a parliament so riven, a stable coalition is essentially beyond the reach of even the cleverest and most energetic prime minister. Unworkable coalitions are literally all there is.

The reform had hoped to achieve the same results that a less propor-

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tional electoral system would have produced. Throughout Israel’s entire history, political impediments—the sheer difficulty of changing the rules of the game from which so many players benefited—had blocked serious electoral reform. Reformers convinced themselves that the enhanced pow-ers and legitimacy enjoyed by directly elected PMs would raise them above the clamor of narrow partisan pressures. The hoped-for streamlining of the party system was to have further bolstered the PM, adding effectual powers to the formal ones listed in the new law. A reduced party system was to have curtailed the blackmail potential of coalition partners. Israel would benefit from a stronger and steadier executive power, without having to dislodge the principle of proportionality enshrined in its constitution.

As we have seen, the results of the 1996 and 1999 elections dashed these hopes. By the middle of 2000, events under Labor prime minister Ehud Barak would catalyze opposition to direct elections and set the stage for its final repeal on 7 March 2001.

Barak’s Tenure and the Demise of Direct Election

The plight of Barak’s government mirrored reform’s structural failure. Despite his convincing 12-point victory, Barak faced a Knesset under the control (albeit by a razor-thin margin) of the religious and right-of-center parties that had been members of Netanyahu’s government. Barak had no choice but to woo some of those parties. As we have seen, it took him almost two months. In the end, he won the confidence vote with seven parties totaling 75 votes. The Arab parties and the secular Shinui were left out. The three religious parties—Shas (17 seats), United Torah Judaism (5), and the Mafdal (5)—as well as the immigrant-based Israel Be’aliyah (6), were included along with Meretz (10) and the Centre Party (6).

The coalition, said some at the time, was so broad that it would be extremely difficult to bring the new government down, especially given that no single party could topple the government by leaving on its own. (Barak did not include Shinui and the Arab parties in his coalition, but could count on their votes to maintain his government if defections occurred.) Yet this optimism proved unfounded. Barely 12 months after taking office, Barak left for the July 2000 Camp David talks with a 29-seat minority government made up of just Labor, One Israel, and the Centre Party. And the Knesset had grown more contentious than ever, with several individual legislators breaking all party bonds and de-manding their share of the pie to join the government.

Why did Barak’s coalition break down so quickly? Barak’s personal leadership style did not help, but the main reason was the presence of deep divisions over two key sets of issues. The first set revolved around relations between religion and the state, while the second set hinged on the conduct of the already-faltering peace process.

Riven by friction and rancor, especially between the ultra-Orthodox,

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Sephardic-dominated Shas and the secular-leftist Meretz, the doomed coalition limped along for another nine months. The heaviest blow fell on the very eve of Barak’s departure to meet with Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton at Camp David in early July 2000, when Shas, Mafdal, and Israel Be’aliyah left.

Thanks to his own skillful maneuvering and his foes’ lack of concert, Barak managed to fend off no-confidence motions for several months. Supporters of direct election claimed that Barak’s ability to hold out for so long despite lacking a Knesset majority was a direct consequence of the reformed system, and in that sense a sign that reform was helping the cause of stability.9 Finally, in early December 2000, Barak decided to resign personally but not to dissolve the Knesset. With this move he aimed to ensure that Sharon rather than Netanyahu would become his opponent in the new election for prime minister: Having left parliament, Netanyahu would not be eligible to run unless the Knesset itself were dissolved.

With the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifadah in late September 2000, Barak’s government appeared frighteningly feeble and hopelessly un-equal to the task of dealing with the diplomatic and security crisis that exploded after the Oslo process collapsed. Nor could Barak’s cabinet handle such mundane but significant matters as the 2001 budget, which wound up having to wait until after the new election for prime minister.

The executive’s inability to overcome the emergency was just the superficial manifestation of a deeper problem. Direct election had am-plified political fragmentation and created a system that condemned the PM to inaction and ineffectiveness, and the country to chronic political instability and frequent elections. The terrible demands of the security and diplomatic crisis shined a harsh light on the system’s shortcomings. As the new Sharon government took office in the spring of 2001, Israel reverted to a slightly modified version of the old parliamentary arrange-ment. Direct election was abolished, a constructive vote of no confidence was introduced, and no-confidence motions required a 61-vote major-ity. In addition, the PM’s power to dissolve the Knesset was preserved. Direct election had been tried, found wanting, and discarded.

The consensus in favor of repeal was broad. The bill to replace direct election passed the Knesset by a vote of 72 to 37, with 3 abstentions. Among those who favored the change were Labor, Likud, Meretz, the right-wing National Union and Herut, four legislators from the Centre Party, and four Arab legislators from different lists. The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism voted in favor, in exchange for a promise by Likud to support religious legislation; Shas instead voted against, as did two out of the five Mafdal legislators. Among the opponents to the change were small parties, including the secular Shinui and the immigrant parties.

With a few individual exceptions, legislators from the more narrowly focused and “sectorial” parties opposed repeal, while members of the bigger or more ideological parties (the very ones that direct election

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was supposed to favor) endorsed it. Clearly, those most likely to lose from the return of the previous system tried to keep direct election alive. It was an eloquent testimony to the reality of direct election’s unintended consequences.

Will the old-new system that was restored in March 2001 strengthen the executive? Time will tell. Meanwhile, what is most surprising about the last chapter of Israel’s brief experience with direct election is that the law replacing it was so hastily discussed and approved. As if to attest to the failure of direct election, only three committee sessions were needed to reach an agreement on the new law, and very little pub-lic debate accompanied the legislative process.10

Israel’s experience weighs strongly against adoption of this model in other parliamentary democracies characterized by a divided society and a similarly fragmented PR system. There is no doubt that Israel’s failure to benefit from the reform derives from the fact that direct election became an alternative to fundamental electoral reform, rather than one element thereof.

If there is a key lesson to be learned from Israel’s failed experiment, it is precisely that direct election of the PM can strengthen the executive only if the PM can govern without parliament. This of course adds to the risk of a populist or even a plebiscitarian-authoritarian turn, but it is a risk that will have to be run by any polity resolved on such a reform.

If direct election is to be coupled with parliamentary government, as Israel tried to do, the electoral system for parliament must also be ad-justed in order to encourage a “coattail” effect for the parties to which candidates for prime minister belong. What would such an adjustment have to look like? Is it even possible?

These are difficult questions to answer in the abstract. One approach might be to force parties to form coalitions behind individual candi-dates before the elections. This would in turn require setting up the ballot so that voters could not split their tickets. But this system too has its complications, especially if more than two candidates run for prime minister. And what, moreover, is to guarantee that coalitions will stick together after the elections?

Other parliamentary democracies, including Japan, that have been considering the adoption of direct election should not necessarily view the Israeli experience as decisive evidence that it must fail. It was Israel’s ballot system that doomed its version of direct election. The one clear lesson of the Israeli experiment is that direct election can succeed only if it is accompanied by an electoral system for parliament that ensures strong majorities for the elected prime minister.

NOTES

1. See Vernon Bogdanor, “The Electoral System, Government, and Democ-racy,” in Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond, eds., Israeli Democracy Under Stress (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), 83–106.

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2. For a favorable view of the new system, see Bernard Susser, “The Direct Election of the PM: A Balance Sheet,” in Daniel J. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler, eds., Israel at the Polls 1996 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 237–57.

3. The vote of confidence is the most obvious feature of a parliamentary sys-tem. Along with it, the 1992 reform also strengthened other parliamentary features, by framing practices in the new legislation. According to the Basic Law, the PM and at least half the ministers should be also members of parliament and, as if to further emphasize the parliamentary nature of the system, the PM’s resignation of his Knesset seat was equated to resignation from office.

4. Uriel Lynn himself uttered prophetic words on this score. On 21 November 1990, in response to a fellow legislator who was insisting on a confidence vote for each new government, Lynn observed: “Anyone who wants to receive the Knesset’s confidence is better off giving up on direct election and keeping the present system. It is not possible to do two things which contradict one another. It is not possible to legislate a law that tries to reach a central goal and afterwards to empty the law of this central purpose. The moment that one enables the Knesset, or that one says that the Knesset ought to express a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister, the meaning is that the Knesset is given the power to annul the mandate that the PM received from the people.”

5. As late as 1997, Uriel Lynn was defending the reform package in interviews, calling it “an excellent law, without which complete anarchy would reign, even worse than the situation on the eve of the ‘stinking maneuver.’” Jerusalem Post, 11 March 1997, 3.

6. Gideon Doron and Michael Harris, Public Policy and Electoral Reform: The Case of Israel (Boston: Lexington Books, 2000), 72.

7. Within a month after the elections, the number had already grown to 16, due to a split in the Israel Be’Aliyah party. This incidentally raised the prospects of that party leaving the coalition, only one week after the government won the confi-dence of the Knesset.

8. This is another indication of failure, since it may be argued that the reform was presented and marketed to the public as a way to reduce the religious parties’ power. See Nehemiah Stressler, “Photo-op with whom?” Ha’aretz (Tel Aviv), 8 November 1991, 1B: “The proposed system of government will most of all hurt the blackmail powers of the ultra-religious parties and the power of the extreme right. This is why it is worthy of full support.” See also Amnon Rubinstein, “Still Time for Electoral Reform,” Jerusalem Post International Edition, 3 August 1991, 2: “Direct election would drastically slash the power vested in such minorities by the current system in ‘tipping the balance.’”

9. See Iki Elner, It’s not the system, in Y-net, Yediot Aharonot online, 18 De-cember 2000, www.ynet.co.il. Elner fends off criticism of direct election by saying, “Without it, we would certainly be witnesses to an unending alternation of Prime Ministers, and this without going to an election and without asking the will of the people.”

The sessions occurred on 20 December 2000 and 13 and 20 Febrary 2001. The record of these truncated deliberations can be found under Proceedings 2361, 2728, and 2761 of the Law, Constitution and Justice Committee, www.knesset.gov.il.