ISRAELI POLITICAL SYSTEM
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For anyone interested in political systems, that of the state of Israel is particularly fascinating for a number of reasons.
The head of the Israeli state is the President who is an apolitical ceremonial figurehead. The President is elected by the Knesset for a seven year term and is limited to a single term. The current holder of the position is Shimon Peres who previously represented five political parties in the Knesset and twice served as Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister is normally the leader of the political party with the largest representation in the legislature, certainly of the political party with the largest representation in the governing coalition. Currently the position is held by Benjamin Netanyahu who is head of the Likud Party (although, in the last elections, Kadima won more votes and more seats), initially the largest party in the current governing coalition. In May 2012, Kadima surpringly joined the government, giving it no less than 94 of the 120 seats in Knesset.
Israel has an unusual system of deputy leaders of three kinds: Acting Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Vice Prime Minister.
The Acting Prime Minister takes the place of the Prime Minister if he or she is temporarily incapacitated while the incumbent is still in office for a period up to 100 consecutive days. The holder of this position can additionally be head of a Government Department. In the current Cabinet, nobody has been appointed to this position.
Deputy Prime Minister and Vice Prime Minister are honorary rather than official executive positions. In the current Cabinet, there are three Deputy Prime Ministers and four Vice Prime Ministers. Talk about jobs for the boys (they are in fact all men).
The Prime Ministers appoints a Cabinet, the membership of which must be approved by the Knesset. Any new appointment to the Cabinet must similarly be approved by the Knesset. Most Ministers are members of the Knesset although only the Prime Minister and the Designated Acting Prime Minister are formally required to be members.
The size of the Cabinet varies but, even before the addition of Kadmia, it was the largest in Israel's history at 30. In addition, there are nine Deputy Ministers outside the Cabinet.
The Cabinet meets weekly on a Sunday in Jerusalem.
Israel has a single chamber legislature called the Knesset - meaning literally gathering or assembly - which consists of 120 members (MKs) elected for a maximum term of four years. In practice, Knesset terms rarely last the full four years and the average term is a mere two years. However, since the current government now embraces so many parties, an early election is unlikely. The next election is due in October 2013.
The simplest way of describing the electoral system of Israel is to call it national list system.
This means that the whole country is in effect regarded as one constituency and voters, instead of choosing one candidate for their local constituency as in many countries, choose one list of candidates from a number of lists, each compiled and presented by a political party on a national level. Although national list systems do not have to operate this way, in Israel closed lists are used which means that the party determines the order of the candidates on the list and the voter has no influence over or choice of that order.
Originally the Israeli electoral system had no specified threshold that a political party had to reach before it could secure representation in the Knesset which in practice meant that, if a political party secured one 120th of the vote on a national basis (that is, a mere 0.83%), it would be represented in the legislature. Today the threshold is 2%.
Many other democratic countries operate list systems but on a sub-national level - for instance, the 16 Lander in Germany or the 16 'regional' constituencies in Italy. But Israel is unique in having a national list system. All countries with list systems operate a threshold but this is usually 3-5% (it is 5% in Germany). Israel's threshold of 2% is very low by international standards.
This is the simple way of explaining Israel's electoral system. The formal way of describing it is to call it the highest averages method of party-list proportional representation using the d'Hondt formula.
The highest averages method requires the number of votes for each party to be divided successively by a series of divisors and seats are then allocated to parties that secure the highest resulting quotient or average, up to the total number of seats available. The d'Hondt formula is the most widely used for list systems and involves using the divisors 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. This system tends to give larger parties a slightly larger portion of seats than their portion of the electorate. Technically this would guarantee that a party with a majority of votes would receive at least half of the seats - except no party in Israeli elections ever secures a majority of votes.
Each Knesset session is known by its election number. So the Knesset elected by Israel's first election in 1949 is known as the First Knesset, while he current Knesset, elected in 2009 is the Eighteenth Knesset.
The Knesset sits at Givat Ram in Jerusalem.
Israel may be a small country - it has a population of less than eight million (similar to that of London) - but, by comparison with most other democracies, political parties in Israel are both numerous and fluid. In the last General Election in February 2009, there were no fewer than 33 parties. Parties are constantly changing name, splitting, combining and forming alliances.
In the last election, 12 political parties secured representation in the Knesset. Only five parties won more than 10 seats and, in order of size, they are:
In January 2011, the Labor Party effectively split with its leader Ehud Barak - currently Defence Minister in the Coalition Government - and four other members leaving the party to form a new one called Atzmaut (Indepedence).
The highest court in Israel is the Supreme Court. The number of Supreme Court justices is determined by a resolution of the Knesset and is usually 12, but currently there are 14 Supreme Court Justices. Justices serve until the age of 70.
Supreme Court Justices, as well as all other judges, are appointed by the President on the nomination of the Judges' Nominations Committee. The Nominations Committee is composed of nine members: three Justices of the Supreme Court (including the President of the Court), two Ministers (one of them being the Minister of Justice), two Members of the Knesset, and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. The Minister of Justice is the chairperson of the Committee.
The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.
Israeli democracy is a source - simultaneously and in almost equal measure - of both pride and frustration.
Israelis are rightly proud that their country is the only genuine and functioning democracy in the Middle East, a region dominated by repressive and dictatorial regimes. It is a democracy that has survived repeated wars and that, with a conscript army and formidable military apparatus, remains on a war-like footing. It is a democracy in which the rule of law is so strong that even a president (Moshe Katsav) or a prime minister (Ehud Olmert) can be indicted (for rape and fraud respectively).
On the other hand, Israeli's strange electoral system and fractious political parties virtually guarantee that the government will be a coalition of very different political parties with a strong likelihood that at least one will be a nationalist or ultra-religious one with disproportionate influence in the government. This makes ruling and legislating - even more negotiating with the Palestinians - very difficult, so that on average Israeli governments last only half their permitted term (two years instead of four).
In many ways, Israel is a somewhat ideosyncratic democracy. The state was born in war, it has repeatedly engaged in further wars, it has regularly been the subject of suicide bombers and rocket attacks, and it is in a permanent state of war-readiness. It has a large, conscript army (the Israeli Defence Force) and formidable security service (Mossad). Every family has some connection with the army and many of the leading political figures have had senior experience in the military or intelligence. To an extent unequalled in any other functioning democracy, it is security - and not ideology or economics - that is at the heart of political discourse and policymaking.
As in so many states, therefore, democracy here is essentially a work in progress.
ROGER DARLINGTON
Last modified on 9 May 2012
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