Executive Governance in Israel (Advances in Political Science)

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Author: Asher Arian | David Nachmias | Ruth Amir

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Executive Governance in Israel Asher Arian, David Nachmias and Ruth Amir

arian/amir/96544/crc

15/11/01

5:14 pm

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Advances in Political Science: An International Series Members of the editorial board: Asher Arian (general editor), Luigi Graziano, William Lafferty, Theodore Lowi and Carole Pateman As an expression of its commitment to global political science, the International Political Science Association initiated this series to promote the publication of rigorous scholarly research by its members and affiliated groups. Conceptual and theoretical developments in the discipline, and their explication in various settings, represent the special focus of the series. Titles include: Christa Altenstetter and James Warner Björkman (editors) HEALTH POLICY REFORM, NATIONAL VARIATIONS AND GLOBALIZATION Asher Arian, David Nachmias and Ruth Amir EXECUTIVE GOVERNANCE IN ISRAEL Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jeremy Mitchell (editors) CONDITIONS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE, 1919–39 Systematic Case-Studies Klaus von Beyme PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN EASTERN EUROPE Ofer Feldman THE JAPANESE POLITICAL PERSONALITY Luigi Graziano LOBBYING, PLURALISM AND DEMOCRACY Justin Greenwood and Henry Jacek (editors) ORGANIZED BUSINESS AND THE NEW GLOBAL ORDER Asha Gupta BEYOND PRIVATIZATION Saadia Touval MEDIATION IN THE YUGOSLAV WARS The Critical Years, 1990–95 Mino Vianello and Gwen Moore (editors) GENDERING ELITES Economic and Political Leadership in 27 Industrialised Societies Advances in Political Science Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71458–X (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England


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Also by Asher Arian SECURITY THREATENED: Surveying Israeli Opinion on Peace and War THE SECOND REPUBLIC: Politics in Israel

Also by David Nachmias RESEARCH METHODS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (6th edition) PUBLIC POLICY IN ISRAEL


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Executive Governance in Israel Asher Arian Distinguished Professor of Political Science City University of New York Graduate Center, and University of Haifa, Israel, and Israel Democracy Institute

David Nachmias Romulo Betancourt Professor of Political Science Tel Aviv University and Israel Democracy Institute

and

Ruth Amir Lecturer Emek Yezreel College Israel

in association with

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION


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© Asher Arian, David Nachmias and Ruth Amir 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–77700–X This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Cataloguing-in-publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 11

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

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Contents List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

1 Designing the Executive Branch

2

3

4

5

1

The chief executive Bases of legitimacy Organization of the executive office Developments in political economy

3 10 11 14

Executive Governance and Democracy

18

The ambivalence of executive power The evolution of executive power The rationalization of executive power Political manager and the organization of office Conclusion

20 24 26 30 34

Prime Ministerial Power: Resources and Constraints

35

The The The The

38 41 48 53

prime minister and the Knesset prime minister, cabinet, and ministers prime minister as ‘super minister’ office of the prime minister

Power-Sharing with Nonelected Authorities

60

Institutional power-sharing The attorney general The governor of the Bank of Israel The state comptroller

60 63 75 80

Elections, Coalitions, and Governance

85

The fragmentation of the party system Coalitions Public opinion’s assessment of the electoral reform

87 93 103

vi

Contents

6

Prime Ministers and Policy-Making

106

Peace with Egypt: 1977 Withdrawing from Lebanon and economic stabilization: 1984 The Oslo Accords: 1993 Conclusion

108 114 121 125

Transition of Government Power

126

Transitions: phases and regimes Transitions in Israel: rules and practices The first transition: 1977 Transitions in the 1980s Transitions in the 1990s

126 129 131 135 137

Balancing Executive Power

147

7

8

Notes

160

Bibliography

161

Index

171

List of Figures 5.1 Rae’s Fractionalization Index: 1949–99 5.2 Number of effective parties, 1949–99 5.3 Budget-weighted portfolio distribution, 1951–99: large vs. small parties 5.4 Budget-weighted portfolio distribution, 1951–99: secular vs. religious parties 5.5 Budget-weighted portfolio distribution, 1951–99: coalition-forming parties vs. coalition partners 5.6 Assessing the direct election of the prime minister 6.1 Support for a Palestinian state and negotiating with the PLO, 1987–94

vii

91 92 99 100 101 105 123

List of Tables 2.1 Government expenditure, selected countries, 1870–1996 3.1 Israel’s prime ministers 3.2 Constitutional framework of prime ministerial governance: before and after the direct election reform 3.3 Secretaries of the cabinet: 1949–2001 3.4 Directors of the office of the prime minister: 1949–2001 5.1 Knesset members of the two largest parties, 1949–99 5.2 Parties and coalitions, 1949–2001 6.1 Topics for consideration

ix

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40 50 56 88 95 107

Acknowledgments This project emerged from discussions at the Israel Democracy Institute, and we have received support and encouragement from many people at the Institute. First and foremost, our gratitude to Arik Carmon, the Institute’s indefatigable president, and to Bernard Marcus, the International President of the Institute. Without them this project would not have been completed. The fellows of the Institute and its staff have aided and reviewed much of our work and we thank them. We wish to make special mention of Sandra Fine, head of the Institute’s Legislative Information Center, for the tireless aid she and her superb staff have given us, to Lorraine Gastwirt, the Institute’s able vice president for administration and to Sheila Sachar, senior secretary of the Institute. We have been very ably assisted by a number of junior scholars at the institute as well. Special thanks go to Doron Navot who was extremely effective in organizing and conducting many of the interviews that serve as a basis for this book. Shachar Goldman, Eran Klein, and Fanny Yuval, all evidenced ability and dedication in their work with us, and we express our gratitude to them. A month at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center of the Rockefeller Foundation afforded AA the perfect setting to assemble much of the material at an early stage of the project. We acknowledge our debts to those who helped us, but assume the responsibility for failing to heed all their advice. AA DN RA

Jerusalem March 2001

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1 Designing the Executive Branch

Political memory seems to be inversely related to the heat of political battle. When the adrenaline of conflict is flowing and immediate goals are phrased as if they were long-term values, it is perhaps inevitable that each situation is considered unique and familiar patterns and comparative generalizations are disregarded. This is what happened in Israel when the legislation providing for the direct election of the prime minister was passed in 1992 and first implemented in 1996. In a sense the condition was unique since the arrangements provided for were unprecedented. But a more judicious analysis of the situation must see the reform as a mutation of a pattern already well under way in Israel and in other democracies. After all, Israel was not the only country in which the appeal of the mass parties of the second half of the twentieth century was on the wane, nor the only country in which the balance between legislative and executive power was clearly being won by the latter. Constitutional innovation demands historical and theoretical perspective. Just how much did the change matter? Were new relations created? Were old ones weakened? Did the personality of the prime minister become more important than the institutional strictures to which he was confined? As if anticipating the Israeli case forty years later, Richard Neustadt (1960, 4) wrote about this regarding the American system: Our politics has been ‘as usual,’ but only by the standard of past crises. In comparison with what was once normality, our politics has been unusual. The weakening of party ties, the emphasis on 1

2 Executive Governance in Israel

personality, the close approach of world events, the changeability of public moods, and above all the ticket-splitting, none of this was ‘usual’ before the Second World War. The Israeli system at the beginning of the twenty-first century fits this statement to a surprising degree. Party ties had been weakening and were dealt a severe blow by the election reform. Personality became paramount in the age of the television sound bite and the pervasive opinion polls; public mood shifts were evident. Moreover, the new system fostered ticket-splitting because it provided each voter with two ballots, one for the prime minister and one for the Knesset (parliament). An appreciation of the impact of the electoral reform makes sense only in terms of past performance. Some supported the reform and some opposed it based on an assessment of what it would do to their own chances of reelection, what would be the fortunes of the party they supported, or how the prime minister and the coalition system would govern. But to assess better or worse demands an examination of how prime ministerial government in Israel performed in the past. We cannot escape a consideration of the relative importance of constitutional provisions, of institutions such as political parties, of events, and of personalities. Our conclusion is that the reform solidified previous patterns of concentration of power in the executive branch, and especially in the office of the prime minister. There is undoubted importance to the personality of the office-holders, their experience and energy level, commitment to or disdain of certain ideals, and their psychological predisposition toward others and toward power. But in the end, the rules of the game of the institutions involved make an enormous amount of difference because it is in that normative framework that the leader operates and is evaluated. Chief executives could choose to overlook the rules, or try to side step them or to even abolish them, but then we may be recounting a story outside the usual realm of democratic politics. The architecture, legitimacy, and performance of democratic institutions are the areas that institutional choice has focused on even as modern executive governance has become increasingly complex (e.g. Sartori, 1994; Linz and Valenzuela, 1994; Weaver and Rockman, 1993; Shugart and Carey, 1992). Constitutional changes come in

Designing the Executive Branch 3

a dazzling variety of designs, defying the long-standing dichotomous classification of presidentialism versus parliamentarism. In the twentieth century, the emergence of hybrid political regimes along with critical institutional analyses pertaining to the performance of democratic regimes seriously questioned the usefulness of the dichotomous classification. The claim that presidential systems constitute a deviant case has been increasingly challenged. Newly established regimes often attempt to regulate, through constitutional law and institutional arrangements, the shortcomings of existing governing systems, paying little attention to schemes of classification. The traditional scheme has been criticized for its European bias. With the analytical focus on parliamentary systems, presidentialism came to be seen as an irregularity (cf. Linz and Valenzuela, 1994) with the United States serving as a well-documented exception to the rule of parliamentary government. Underlying this conceptual framework is the central proposition that parliamentarism represents a ‘normal’ evolutionary form of government and the natural product of the gradual transition from monarchy to democracy. By contrast, presidentialism was an artificial, consciously engineered form of government. Although the British cabinet system dates back to the late seventeenth century, its evolution and the expansion of executive power were the inevitable outcomes of economic, social, and political developments of the last three centuries. The overall declining significance of parliaments in governance, the widening of the franchise accompanied by the consolidation of mass parties, and the emergence of big government in the twentieth century forged and configured the predominant role of chief executives. In this chapter we analyze the position of chief political executives in various constitutional configurations regarding their bases of legitimacy, the organization of their executive offices, and the reasons for the dramatic expansion of government. This comparative examination provides the theoretical context within which the central caveats of executive governance in democracies in general and in Israel in particular will be analyzed.

The chief executive The design of democratic regimes is configured by two critical factors: the authority of the chief executive in relation to the cabinet,


and the fusion of executive and legislative power. The central characteristic of presidentialism was the separation of legislative from executive powers. Presidential regimes are thus characterized by the popular election of the chief executive, with fixed terms in office for the chief executive and assembly, not contingent on mutual confidence. While elected executives appoint and direct the composition of government, their roles in policy-making have been constrained. In Western Europe, the gradual emergence of parliamentarism reflected the evolution of monarchies into democracies. Most European states instituted democratic constitutions and elected parliaments towards the end of the nineteenth century when the head of state was the monarch. These constitutions reflected the adaptation of the institutions to the specifics of governmental powers on the a priori assumption that the state continues to exist but that its regime must be altered (Elazar, 1985). During the transition to democracy the control of the executive branch gradually shifted from the monarch to the elected assembly. This is reflected in the semantic distinction between the presidential ‘chief executive’ and the parliamentary ‘prime minister.’ The key constitutional features of parliamentary democracy include the popular election of the legislature, the dependence of prime ministers on the confidence of the legislature controlled by their parties, and the institutionalization of executive succession in an orderly manner. Hybrid regimes emerged in the second half of the twentieth century as alternative forms of government. The main attribute of hybrid regimes is a dual authority structure, or in Sartori’s words (1997, 122) ‘a two-headed configuration’ in which a diarchy is established between a president who is head of state, and a prime minister who heads the government. In essence, the two heads are unequal in their authority and power oscillates between them depending on the majority status of one over the other. Aron (1981) and Lijphart (1994) suggest that hybrids are not intermediates between presidential and parliamentary systems, but rather regimes that alternate between the pure types in response to changing political circumstances at different historical times. According to Hoffman (1963), the French Third Republic was a republic ‘with plenty of brakes and not much motion.’ In Aron’s (1981, 8) view, the president in the Fifth Republic ‘is the supreme authority as long as he has a majority in the national assembly; but he must abandon the


reality of power to the prime minister if ever a party other than his own has a majority in the assembly.’ For Sartori (1997, 124), hybrid regimes constitute a distinct type because ‘alternation suggests passage from one thing to another while oscillation is a within-system movement. In oscillating something remains itself.’ The most distinct difference between the hybrids and the other types of regimes concerns the institutional management of divided majorities. In parliamentary systems, once the prime minister loses the support of the legislature, his or her government is ousted. In contrast, in the United States, the two branches of government have come to see their respective electoral interests to be in the failing of the other institution. Consequently, the regime displays inherent obstacles for coping accountably and effectively with divided government. Nonetheless, governance is not seriously interrupted because of blurred public policy priorities, weak and undisciplined parties, and state and locally centered politics. The president can also attempt to sway congressional votes through pork-barreling. Hybrid regimes cope with the governance problem of divided government through constitutional provisions rather than institutional practices. Indeed, the inherent political tension and the potential for conflict are grounded in the very relationship between the president and the prime minister who is supported by the parliament. The diarchy is firmly incorporated in the constitution. However, actual political support determines the ongoing balance of power. In the case of a unified majority the president decisively prevails over the prime minister, while with a split majority the prime minister, supported by both the parliamentary majority and the constitution, prevails. Hybrid regimes emerged under peculiar, very special historical and political circumstances, in countries such as Finland, France, and the Weimar Republic. Thus in 1905, Finland obtained national independence from Russia and began a process of democratization. This process accelerated throughout Europe following the AustroHungarian and German defeat in the First World War, and the gaining of independence in the remaining dependent countries of Western Europe. The political elites of many of these ‘second wave’ states espoused the advantages of replacing the monarch with an elected head of state and at the same time holding the cabinet accountable to parliament. In Finland, the political Right strongly preferred a constitutional monarchy. However, the low political likelihood of


establishing such a regime coupled with the distrust and intense fear of the Left, resulted in the creation of a unique premier–presidential regime (Linz, 1994; Arter, 1985; Nousiainen, 1988). The Finnish constitution is somewhat vague on the division of authority between the president and government, although it established ‘reserve domains’ of presidential authority in foreign affairs and coalition formation. Due primarily to the continued significance of the relations with the former Soviet Union, this vagueness did not lead to major governance crises. While the president had clear reserve domains and headed the weekly State Council meetings dutifully deliberating only on the constitutionally mandated issues, it was the prime minister who led the cabinet and had authority over most legislative and administrative matters. In the nineteenth century the transition to constitutional monarchies in many European countries was accompanied by the major shift of authority over the cabinet from the monarch to parliament. Thus the French parliamentary democracy was established under the Third Republic in 1871, following several regime transitions, including a republican democracy, dictatorship, and a monarchical restoration. In 1962 the newly adapted constitution of the Fifth Republic was a reaction to political instability and the lack of governing capability of a weak executive. The idea of a neutral institution arbitrating between political parties or presiding above them was quite appealing in those countries where societal and partisan polarization made governance through parliamentarism extremely difficult, if not impossible (Linz, 1994; Suleiman, 1994). The German constitution of 1919 established a dual executive system which was semi-presidential, semi-parliamentary. The Weimar Republic was one of the first democracies that experimented with this model. Although the designers preferred a strong leader for the new democracy, downright presidentialism entailing the separation of powers was not contemplated as a serious option. Max Weber (1947) was among those who advocated the benefits of such a regime for resolving the political deadlock caused by the fractionalized party system. The initial intent was to establish a parliamentary monarchy comparable to the British design. However, the federal structure of the state, the characteristics of the party system, and the preference for strong and effective leadership due to Germany’s difficult international position ruled out this alternative. The workable


political compromise devised by Hugo Preuss, the drafter of the Weimar constitution, was to directly elect the president without relinquishing the established parliamentary tradition. A premier–presidential (semi-presidential) regime implies a regime type located midway along some continuum running from presidential to parliamentary, in which there is both a prime minister as in a parliamentary system and a popularly elected president, such as in the French Fifth Republic (Duverger, 1980). Semi-presidential regimes are characterized by the popular election of the head of state (president), along with a premier and cabinet subject to assembly confidence and performing executive functions. In president–parliamentary regimes the president is the head of the executive branch and the cabinet is accountable to the legislature, providing equal authority to the president and parliament in cabinet formation and ministerial appointments. Yet the president has the authority to dissolve parliament. Such a regime is characterized by the popular election of the president, with the president having the power to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers and to dissolve parliament (see Shugart and Carey, 1992, 26). The prime ministerial–parliamentary regime legislated in 1992 in Israel and repealed in 2001 is a genuine, albeit quite problematic mixture of parliamentary regime with presidential attributes. The prime minister is elected directly, however, a ‘balance of terror’ is inherent in the relationship between the prime minister as the head of the executive branch and the Knesset (parliament), because each can dismiss the other. The prime minister can dissolve the Knesset by resigning thus calling for the elections of both prime minister and parliament. The Knesset can dismiss the prime minister and retain office only if a no-confidence vote is supported by at least two-thirds of its members. A no-confidence vote supported by an absolute majority but less than two-thirds requires new elections for both Knesset and prime minister. The Israeli case thus features the popular election of the prime minister, with the prime minister having the authority to appoint cabinet ministers, contingent on approval by the Knesset, and to dismiss ministers. A prime minister can dissolve parliament by resigning, but the Knesset can bring down the prime minister. The principal difference between presidential and all the other regime types concerns the political relationship between the executive


and legislature. The essence of parliamentary regimes is in the direct accountability of government to the legislative branch. Accountability is grounded in a constitutional provision: the head of the government is dependent on the confidence of the legislature for forming and maintaining the governing coalition. Indeed, the very process of coalition formation is a political search for the legislature’s confidence. The leader of the largest party in parliament (who ordinarily later becomes the prime minister) is usually asked by the head of state to form a governing coalition. The head of the state may also ask a politician supported by the largest bloc in the legislature to attempt to form a coalition in situations where the leader of the largest party is unable to do so. In pure presidential systems the legislature and the executive maintain separate political existence and institutional powers. The chief executive is elected independently of the legislature and serves a fixed term in office. Members of the legislature are free from executive threat, and can ratify, amend, or veto executive initiatives based on the merit of the legislation itself or on political considerations rather than on the survival of government. The chief executive can neither dismiss the legislature and call for new elections nor be dismissed by the legislature without a serious cause. In the United States the president can be dismissed by congress through impeachment for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Another important aspect of the executive–legislature relations in presidential regimes and some hybrids concerns the veto power of the chief executive over legislation passed by the legislative branch. Extraordinary legislative majorities are required to override presidential veto thus considerably strengthening presidential powers. Unless the legislature is made up of large anti-presidential majorities, the veto makes the president the equivalent of a third chamber of the legislature (Riker, 1984, 109). Not all presidents have veto powers that can be reversed only by extraordinary majorities. Under the pre-2000 Venezuela constitution, presidential veto power could be overridden by a simple majority, unless the supreme court upheld the president’s claim that a bill is unconstitutional. The French president, quite powerful in other respects, does not have a true veto power as in the American case, but is authorized to dissolve the legislature. In a sense the veto is inconsequential because the regime functions as a presidential


regime only when the president is supported by a majority in the assembly. In parliamentary regimes the relationships between the legislature and the executive are invariant. They are shaped by the provision that parliament is the single popularly legitimated institution. Although in parliamentary democracies the legislature is formally sovereign, in practice governments controlling the majority of seats can muster a legislative majority by enforcing party and/or coalition discipline. The division of labor between the legislature and the executive in parliamentary regimes is such that the legislature controls the fortune of government, and government makes and implements policy decisions by virtue of its control over government ministries and agencies (Laver and Shepsle, 1994). This gives government near monopoly control over information and other public resources, making it difficult for the opposition to develop its own agenda. In presidential regimes, the relationships between the executive and legislature are dynamic, often unpredictable and always complex (Keefe, 1980), but have proven robust and resilient over time. In this context, Neustadt (1991) has even questioned the extent to which the American constitution created in fact a separation of power system: the constitution did not separate the powers or functions. It separated institutions that shared the powers of governance and set up competition for influence regarding the substance of policy. The mutual assessment of legitimacy and competency is also vital in the relationships between congress and the presidency ( Jones, 1995). The constitutional balance of power between the two institutions has varied over the years with Congress occasionally gaining primacy and the president at other times. At times cooperative relations exist between the two branches, at other times the relations are adversarial. The regime has also experienced periods in which it was unclear which institution predominated. In sum, relationships in democracies between legislatures and executives are structured by mutual checks and balances; specific patterns and their consequences vary across regimes. The temporal flexibility of parliamentary regimes provides the legislature with coercive capabilities and oversight authority for constraining executive power. However, when a parliament is highly fragmented these very capabilities constitute a substantial source of political instability. The institutional rigidity of presidential systems encourages

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Executive Governance in Israel

robust patterns in which the balance of power can shift both ways without jeopardizing either the tenure of the executive or the authority of the legislature.

Bases of legitimacy Legitimacy is the sine qua non of democratic governance. Presidential and parliamentary regimes represent different conceptions of popular legitimacy. Presidential democracies are regimes of dual legitimacy in which both the president who heads the executive and the legislature are directly elected. The president’s tenure in office is independent of the legislature’s confidence, and the incumbency of the legislature is independent of the president. Tenure in office is constitutionally predetermined for a fixed term and cannot be modified under normal circumstances. Consequently, the duration of the president’s mandate becomes a fundamental political factor to which all other political actors must adjust. The only institution with popular legitimacy in parliamentary systems is the legislature. Government authority is derived from the confidence of the parliament, or, lacking a parliamentary majority, from the parliament’s acceptance of a minority government between elections because of its inability to form an alternative government. In hybrid regimes, the bases of legitimacy are dual, resembling those of presidential systems. Indeed, dual democratic legitimacy tends to enhance institutional conflict (Linz, 1994). When both chief executive and legislature claim legitimacy, it is most likely that each espouses different policy choices. Under such circumstances, which branch of government is more legitimate? Which branch better represents the votes? From a democratic governance perspective, is dual or single legitimacy superior? A single base of legitimacy has been the prevalent mode. Dual legitimacy was introduced as an institutional arrangement to provide procedures of checks and balances in order to constrain executive power. Even the dual legitimacy of presidential regimes is not in fact dual. In the United States both the president and congress can claim democratic legitimacy, but in reality the president’s claim is stronger by virtue of being the head of state. Indeed, much of the criticism against presidentialism concerns the existence of two separate and competing claims to legitimacy. Since both branches


are politically independent, presidential regimes lack intrinsic incentives to compromise and cooperate (Mainwaring, 1989). Still another implication of dual legitimacy is that presidents, unlike prime ministers, need not continually seek the confidence of the assembly and consequently they tend to be less attentive to dissatisfaction with executive performance, thus increasing the potential for political conflict (Shugart and Carey, 1992). In hybrid regimes, dual legitimacy tends to present a similar problem. Bicameral systems consisting of directly elected chambers with different partisan compositions and federal division of powers are likely to induce the problem of dual legitimacy (Lijphart, 1994). Certainly most of the characteristics of consensual democracy are deliberate attempts to safeguard against a single institutional legitimacy that would concentrate power.

Organization of the executive office Chief executives secure and control information, set the policy agenda, decide on policy options, choose politically workable courses of action and attempt to ensure, as much as possible, their implementation. In addition to the general bureaucratization trend of executive governance, as discussed in Chapter 2, the different attributes of regimes also find strong expression in the organization of the executive offices. Blondel (1982) suggested that the more political power is concentrated in one person, the more the government is likely to be organized in a hierarchical manner. When political power is decentralized and dispersed, governance is likely to be collective or diffuse. In such cases governmental policy-making evolves on a trade-off basis. Although somewhat simplistic (Blondel, 1993) depicted the structure of governments along two dimensions: unity versus division and hierarchical versus collective decision-making. A government is considered united when policy decisions emanate from one center. If the center is composed of one or a few decisionmakers and the rest of the government depends for its guidance on the initiatives of the center, then government is both united and hierarchical. Hierarchical and collective governments are two extremes of this continuum with variations in between. Presidential administrations tend to be closer to the hierarchical end. The executive office forms an aggregate organization consisting

12


of several differentiated and specialized units set to provide the president with the administrative resources, programmatic analyses and political assistance necessary to manage the executive branch. Presidential nominees are quite independent of the party leadership in the selection of cabinet ministers, politically facilitating the institutionalization of a fairly hierarchical organization. The president’s cabinet consists of the heads of the executive departments and several other high-ranking appointed officials. The cabinet meets at the discretion of the president and is sometimes formed into smaller policy groups around particular policy areas. The cabinet, however, does not dominate the policy process. As Fenno (1959, 6) points out, ‘Cabinet members themselves are inextricably involved in the activities of the legislature, the bureaucracy, the political parties and the political interest groups. The cabinet and especially its individual members, participate in a great multiplicity of external relationships which are not in the first instance matters of its internal characteristics nor of its presidential tie.’ Consequently, the White House staff has emerged as the central actor in the policy development process, replacing the cabinet as the president’s chief policy advisors and aides, and guiding departmental policy-making within the framework of presidential initiatives. Most modern presidents commenced office with a commitment to a strong cabinet and shortly afterward restructured the policymaking process to restore the power of the White House staff. Ironically, Richard Nixon’s ‘imperial presidency’ evolved despite his public pledge in the 1968 election to restore cabinet government and empower cabinet members as deputy presidents. As a consequence of big government with its numerous, diverse, and specialized activities the federal bureaucracy has differentiated vertically and horizontally to such an extent that the president and his immediate aides could exercise little control over the various departments and agencies. As Foley and Owens (1996) suggest, the presidential office was designed to compensate for the solitary status ‘against the big battalions of the executive departments’ and to tilt the balance away from the forces of the bureaucracy towards central presidential authority. The organization of the Office of the United States President clearly indicates that the president is both Chief of State and Head of the Executive branch, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed


forces. The Office of the President is made up of some 400 staff appointed by the president or his senior aides, and the White House business is managed by a Chief of Staff. There is great flexibility in organizing the White House. Usually presidents reorganize the White House in order to meet their policy agendas and to fit their personal style. The organization of executive offices in non-presidential systems reflects power-sharing rather than concentration of power in the hands of one person. The cabinet as a whole is expected to formulate policies on important issues and to react to major events and crises. The collective character of the executive in non-presidential systems does not entail any specific distribution of power within the cabinet, yet all ministers are held accountable for the outcome of decisions. Because of the sheer volume of issues reaching the executive, their complexity, and often their very specialized, technical nature, there has been great reliance on cabinet and subcabinet committees. Much of government’s work is carried out through a system of committees forming a significant component of the administrative-political structure. Decisions made by cabinet committees have the same weight as those made by the full cabinet forum and bind cabinet members. Committees are often authorized to settle policy issues without further reference to the full cabinet, although in case of a tie an issue can be brought to cabinet for final decision. In hybrid regimes the formal organization of government is inevitably more complex and intricate. In France, authority is divided between the president of the republic, elected directly for a term of seven years, and the prime minister. The president performs the ceremonial duties as the head of state in parliamentary regimes, and is also the chief executive. The president appoints the prime minister and other members of government based on the recommendation of the prime minister. Both the president and the prime minister share executive authority. Although the president plays a prominent role in the conduct of international relations, it is the prime minister who heads the government and is held accountable for its actions and inactions. The French prime minister organizes the work of government, exercises regulatory power, and makes those top civil service and military appointments that the president is not authorized to make.

14


This duality of the two-headed executive is reflected in the organization of the offices of both executives. The president is assisted by the general secretariat of the presidency, responsible for information and coordination, and by the private office that includes administrative staff and advisors covering the range of presidential activities and responsibilities. The prime minister is aided by the private office comprised of numerous assistants, and by the general secretariat of the cabinet that plays a major role in the administrative procedures involved in governing.

Developments in political economy Four major developments in the political economy of western democracies provide the background for the growth of government that in turn has fostered expansion in the roles and organization of executive offices. The first is rooted in the idea of market failures – the set of conditions under which an idealized competitive economy fails to allocate resources efficiently. The traditional market fails to deal adequately with public goods, defined as those goods the consumption of which by one user does not reduce the supply available for others. The failure also applies to externalities, as when the action of a person or a firm hurts or benefits others without that person or firm paying or receiving compensation. It applies to natural monopolies, giving rise to the possibility of restricting output to increase prices and profits. It also applies to information asymmetries, as when suppliers know more than consumers or vice versa. All of these have provided the policy rationale for government intervention and its consequent growth. In addition, social and moral concerns over equity have promoted government intervention through redistributive policies even in the absence of market failure, essentially because competitive markets may distribute wealth and income in socially and politically unacceptable ways. A second, related development focuses more explicitly on public finance and government budgeting. Public sector economics by its very nature and dynamics tends to increase government expenditures. The so-called ‘Baumol’s disease’ is a prime example. According to Baumol (1967), government is a labor-intensive organization that does not gain much in productivity from the utilization of capital expenditures. Therefore, in particular during periods of inflation,


the cost of government services increases more rapidly than the cost of other goods and services, based on the assumption that public sector pay remains equivalent to private sector salaries. In other words, maintaining the level of goods and services to which the public has been accustomed means increasing the cost of government. The alternative of lowering the level of services has been politically unattractive. The sharp increases in entitlements, both within the general context of the contemporary welfare state and the more specific proliferation of special interest groups, is the third major development for explaining increases in the size of government. At the end of the nineteenth century, European industrial nations possessed the foundations for a centrally administered welfare state. From this point on, state concerns for conditions of life resulted in government intervention in most areas of human existence, and ultimately evolved into the all-encompassing social security and regulatory systems of the second half of the twentieth century. In the United States, the foundations of the welfare state were established later through the New Deal and the Employment Act of 1946, and they were expanded with President Johnson’s Great Society social programs in the 1960s. This so-called ‘uncontrollable’ government spending arose out of commitments that were written into law to individuals and groups of citizens, and can thus be altered only if the legislation authorizing such spending is changed. Between 1960 and 1995 much of the expansion in government was driven by increases in transfers and subsidies (IMF, 1997). By the end of the 1990s, governments in western democracies spent more on entitlements than on providing traditional public goods. Demographics account for a large part of this spending as the age structures of populations have been rapidly changing, with the growing older segment of the population translating into increased spending for pensions and health care. Nonetheless, policy preferences motivated by political agendas and electoral considerations contribute to significant variations among democracies (Flora, 1986). The fourth development has been the bureaucratic part of government. Structurally, the bureaucracy is the major component of the executive branch, yet it has become so vast and powerful in its own right that it is often referred to as the ‘fourth branch of government.’

16


The ‘bureaucratic politics’ perspective sees public bureaucracies as relatively autonomous actors exerting large amounts of influence in the formation of public policies, in their implementation and in the evaluation of existing programs and policies. Elected officials are dependent on the expertise, the organizational skills, and the administrative and political know-how of appointed officials. These non-elected administrators, in particular those at the top, control pertinent information and exercise considerable influence in the policy processes (Nachmias and Rosenbloom, 1978). An inevitable consequence of the expanding scope of government activities has been the growth of bureaucracy. In Jones’s words, ‘Government programs beget bureaucracy, and bureaucracy begets more bureaucracy’ (1984, 13). Indeed, bureaucratic growth has a dynamic of its own. Whether from the maximization perspective or from the descriptive incremental one, the typical behavior of bureaucrats in their decision-making roles leads to bureaucratic expansion. Niskanen’s (1971) model of bureaucratic growth, for example, postulates that bureau chiefs are budget maximizers using their control of information and their publicly secretive administrative and political skills to increase their budgets above the necessary level. Incrementalism, using past budgets as a base for future budgets rather than basing the budget on a performance evaluation, is more congruent with the pluralist political process of coalitionbuilding, bargaining, and compromise, and adds varying increments to the bureaucracy, the cumulative outcome of which has been progressive expansion. Whether there are limits to bureaucratic growth remains largely an unsolved puzzle (Meyer et al., 1985), notwithstanding current endeavors in most western democracies to retrench and reform their public bureaucracies. Ultimately the growth of government has been the outcome of political decisions in response to or in anticipation of voters’ opinions and demands. The political perspective invariably emphasizes the policy aggregation role of political parties as they compete for the vote of the middle class and of the ‘median voter.’ Another major source of government expansion has been the success of interest-group politics either in the form of institutionalized policy networks or outright lobbying. Since interest groups tend to pursue narrow or segmented concerns rather than the more general public interest, their impact on the policy process leads in the direction of


government growth. Once established, an interest group has a strong incentive to endure because the group’s rewards for organized action are larger relative to the cost that individual members bear in pursuing the group’s cause (Olson, 1965). This low cost/high reward equation has led to the proliferation of policy-minded interest groups throughout the public policy space, having considerable influence especially over transfer and regulatory policies. These developments in the political economy have not only dramatically expanded the size of government and the scope of the executive branch but have also raised new concerns about executive power, its capabilities, constraints, and accountability as well as new issues pertaining to institutional choice. In the following chapter these concerns are addressed in the context of executive governance in democracies.

2 Executive Governance and Democracy

In democracies, perhaps inevitably, public policies tend to be contradictory, fragmented, and incoherent as policy-makers pursue mutually inconsistent objectives at one and the same time. Even when the design of an optimal policy is feasible and political expediency permits its passage, the problem of dynamic inconsistency persists. That is, there may yet be a discrepancy between the optimal policy in the long run and the optimal policy at any given time (Kydland and Prescott, 1977). Accordingly, institutional designs make a great difference. Thoughtfully conceived and properly implemented, designs can lessen policy contradictions, moderate fragmentation, and reduce incoherence (Shepsle, 1986). Political institutions structure the processes through which policy decisions are formulated and implemented and these in turn strongly affect the polity’s governing capacity (Weaver and Rockman, 1993). The institutional structures of the polity are of particular importance because they shape the public policy-making processes, prescribing which public issues and problems are accorded consideration and in what order of priority (Shepsle, 1986). The effects of political institutions can be either direct or mediated by the broader social-economic structure within which they operate. Political institutions embody not only legal, procedural arrangements but also substantive, normative aspirations. Indeed, no one set of political institutions is optimal for all democracies (e.g. parliamentary vs. presidential) in all situations (e.g. nation-building or developed), nor is a polity’s specific choice of institutions everlasting. As inefficiencies in governing capability mount, the support of existing institutional 18

Executive Governance and Democracy 19

arrangements declines and proposals for reform permeate the public agenda. Although the specifics of the reforms vary, their general objective, at least in rhetoric, is similar: to enhance government accountability and effectiveness. The responsiveness of the political elites to widespread demands for reform is by itself a distinct measure of governing capabilities. Failure to respond sensibly and in a timely manner may lead to a legitimacy crisis and even political turmoil. At the very fundamental level of governing capabilities is the fusion or separation of executive and legislative power. In general, parliamentary systems institutionalize more fusion of power and greater centralization of decision-making in the cabinet. Prime ministers are selected by the legislature, and their tenure in office depends on the confidence of the legislature. The wider the legislative support, the higher is the concentration of executive power, since parliamentary support is a foregone conclusion. Generally, party cohesion is relatively strong with the party leadership possessing a variety of disciplinary measures over individual legislators, including placement in the party list in proportional representation systems, party endorsement and campaign financing in singlemember-constituency systems, and elevation to ministerial positions or other rewarding public positions. The cabinet is composed chiefly of veteran politicians who are also members of the legislative branch, and nearly all are assigned by the prime minister to head executive departments. Such institutional arrangements lead to the formation of grand, consensual, relatively coherent, congruent and stable public policies, such as the welfare state in western parliamentary democracies. Public education, nationalized health services, social security, public housing, public transportation, and social welfare are all examples of policies deriving from the general, continuous, and relatively consistent commitment to the welfare state, despite the wide variety of emphasis among governments in parliamentary democracies. Notwithstanding the variety of institutional designs, the most pronounced transformation in modern democratic governance has been the factual shift of political power from the legislature and the judiciary to the executive. Political executives have replaced legislators in the conduct of governmental affairs, commanding almost exclusive media and popular attention. The public expects the prime

20


minister, the president, and the chancellor to lead and to give direction to government; to make authoritative decisions about collective problems of society, and to project the strength and the unity of the nation. From an institutional evolutionary perspective, the executive, which in Finer’s words (1949, 575) has remained ‘the residuary legatee in government after other claimants like Parliament and the law courts have taken their share,’ has become the central core of government. At the same time, the democratization processes encompassing broader and more explicit and transparent commitments to representation, participation, and accountability have led to a marked ambivalence of executive power. Voters, elected officials, the media, and scholars, all share this ambivalence of contemporary executive power. A legacy of the eighteenth century, the doctrine of the separation of powers was intended to limit the sinister encroachment of the executive. The doctrine itself is firmly in place in the textbooks of democracy, but the constant danger of the centralization of power has hardly receded. On the contrary, the atomizing features of cultural individualism, a hallmark of western modernism, have all but led to abandoning the battlefield to those who would champion the concentration of authority. Despite the promises of constitutional engineering to construct institutions which will better serve the interests of the governed and which will achieve their goals, the task of setting effective limits on government and politicians becomes more challenging as economic, technological, and political power become more concentrated (Shugart and Carey, 1992).

The ambivalence of executive power The ambivalence of executive power is found in the very term itself. The dictionary meaning of the word ‘executive’ is one who ‘carries out.’ For example, in the American Constitution the president is given the duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ (Article II, section 3). In this interpretation, the executive serves merely to carry out, to implement the intention of the law, as willed by others – the people directly and their representatives, the legislature, indirectly. Unlike the dictionary meaning, the politicaladministrative implication of the word ‘executive’ has evolved over the years to reflect a considerably more inclusive and pointed


development. The executive branch in modern industrial states ‘consists not of a single structure or a class of structures but of a wide variety of structures, including monarchs, presidents, cabinets, central staffs, operating agencies, regulatory commissions, administrative tribunals, armed forces, investigatory commissions, advisory bodies, and publicly owned enterprises’ (King, 1975, 183). The executive does much more than execute the law. The executive also initiates laws and most public policies, and regulates and coordinates the myriad and varied activities of government. In most industrial democracies, with the partial exception of the United States, the executive has become the principal policy-maker. The expectations from the modern political executive and its actual behavior transcend the narrow historical scope and the dictionary definition of ‘executive,’ while underscoring the dominant position of the executive as well as the sense of ambivalence regarding executive power. In the scholarly literature on the modern executive the ambivalence of executive power is clearly manifested. The US and Britain are classic examples because the modern political executive was invented and institutionalized in them. The executive is expected to be both powerful and constrained, independent yet subordinate, leader and follower. Furthermore, these two political systems gave rise to presidentialism and parliamentarism, respectively, the two contrasting institutional designs that are the purest forms of democratic executive functioning, serving as prototypes for the variants that fall between. The American presidency was the first invented modern republican and constitutional executive. The landmark studies of Neustadt (1960) and Corwin (1957) illustrate well the ambivalence of executive power. Neustadt developed a more empirical, informal approach to studying the presidency, and defined two conceptions of the office as clerkship and leadership, while Corwin advanced a legal, formal, and limiting framework. The normative implications of these approaches are quite different. Neustadt sees a president who creates power of position from his own initiatives, using the formal authority of the office to become a leader. Corwin, on the other hand, rejects the framework of a president’s personal power, advocating instead a limited institution embodying primarily the unique and transparent functions and roles of executive power as deriving

22


from the intent of the framers of the US Constitution and the evolution of constitutional law and practice. In Britain, where governance is based upon the constitutional doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, and parliament as a representative institution pre-dates the modern state, governance has in fact been carried out, in Norton’s phrase, ‘through parliament and not by parliament’ (1991, 314). The fusion of political power and the centralization of public policy-making in the cabinet have institutionalized the primacy of the executive over parliament. In this context, the ambivalence of executive power is most apparent in the scholarly controversy over cabinet government versus prime ministerial government. Mackintosh (1968) and Crossman (1963) were principal protagonists in this dispute, arguing that over the years the power of the prime minister has progressively increased resulting in the diminished position of the cabinet as the supreme agent of government under the British unwritten constitution. Prime ministerial power over the cabinet evolved as the inevitable consequence of the authority to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers and to allocate ministerial portfolios. Furthermore, prime ministers have acquired the authority to alter ministerial jurisdictions, to determine the cabinet’s agendas, to chair cabinet meetings, to determine the range of policy options and the composition of cabinet committees, and to declare and interpret cabinet decisions. While disagreements and policy disputes are brought up and managed in formal cabinet meetings, in reality the cabinet does not have the power of an executive decision-making body. The modern prime minister ascended to, in Crossman’s words (1963, 51), ‘the apex not only of a highly centralized political machine, but also of an equally centralized and vastly powerful administrative machine.’ Harold Wilson and George Jones, among others, represent the more constrained, cabinet government approach. According to Wilson (1976, 20), the prime ministerial government approach ‘ignored the system of democratic checks and balances in parliament, in the cabinet, and not least in the party machine.’ Similarly, Jones (1985, 196) maintains that the restraints on the prime minister’s power have been as strong as ever, and ‘in some ways even stronger.’ Within this more formal and limiting framework, Margaret Thatcher’s downfall has been attributed to her isolation from her Conservative Party and, more consequentially, from her own cabinet due to her


centralizing and domineering leadership style (Alderman and Carter, 1991). The ambivalence of executive power has remained a critical dilemma in democratic theory and practice in other democracies as well. In Germany, the issue emerges as a debate over whether the regime is best characterized as a chancellor democracy or a coordination democracy. In Ireland, the question is whether the head of government is a chairman or a chief. In Israel, the issue is whether or not the legislation mandating the direct election of the prime minister altered the regime into a quasi-presidential hybrid expanding the formal authority of the prime minister at the expense of the Knesset and the cabinet. The ambivalence of power dilemma is primarily due to the inherent tension between institutional and personal accountability on one hand, and effective executive governance on the other. Political institutions and the rules of the political game are designed to institutionalize a normative, acceptable balance between democratic accountability and government effectiveness and efficiency by imposing restrictions and constraints on governing elites. Institutions furnish the normative, legal and culturally accepted framework within which political actors are expected to exercise their power effectively and accountably. Parliamentary systems are designed in theory to fuse executive power, whereas the American version of presidentialism was designed to diffuse power. Yet in all systems, executives have added power since their election is a mark of legitimacy. This is the case whether they are elected directly (as in Israel, France, Russia, and Mexico), indirectly (as in the United States), or, as in pure parliamentary systems, by the support of the party or parties whose votes they count on to rule in parliament. At the same time, historical circumstances and the personality or leadership styles of chief executives have furnished many opportunities to exert strong and lasting impacts on the history of the country. Those chief executives who are esteemed most by the public governed effectively during times of major crises or significant historical changes, such as nation-building. Thus the American executive was transformed during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s twelve years in office (1933– 45) from a ‘traditional presidency,’ in Greenstein’s (1988) phrase, that embraced few responsibilities and was overshadowed by

24


congress, to the ‘modern presidency’ that is proactive and occupies political center stage. It was FDR’s administration that first effectively encountered the Great Depression and then the Second World War. David Lloyd George in the First World War and Winston Churchill in the Second World War rose to positions of ascendancy during their wartime administrations, and although their power declined in peacetime, the conception and practice of executive power changed significantly. Jawaharlal Nehru and David Ben-Gurion, top leaders of major national independence movements and the first prime ministers of the newly independent states of India and Israel, served in office for 17 and 13 years, respectively, and left institutional and personal legacies for their countries.

The evolution of executive power The shift of power from the legislature to the executive has been a protracted process, and not an abrupt about-face. In some cases, such as in the United States, the process is interrupted by a reassertion of power by the legislature, buttressed by a constitution championing balance and consensus over partisanship and action. But even there, the gradual ascendancy of the executive is closely associated with the legitimization of public authority through the consolidation of the modern rational state. The subsequent marginalization of mass parties, and the extensive and intensive expansion of public goods, government services, and regulatory activities associated with the executive branch, consolidated the shift of power. Major domestic and international crises often triggered and intensified this secular trend. Thus despite the variability in constitutional designs and institutional practices, the size of government and of the executive broadly defined has dramatically increased. The expansion of the executive and its bureaucratization became increasingly rationalized and legitimized by rational-legal values, norms and practices. The rationale of modern executive power became akin to the rationale of the modern democratic state itself: coping more effectively and efficiently with the ever increasing complexity of modern governance, its associated uncertainty, and the bounded rationality of its governing elites. The major consequence of these parallel developments has been the emergence of big government encompassing an ever-increasing scope of activities

a a a

a a a

9.1

9.1

15.4

a

a

a

a

a

15.4

20.7

a

a

a

a

a

29.6

33.8

21.2 28.0 59.2 26.9

28.5

18.3b

44.5

48.8

31.6 48.9 76.4 38.1

43.3

48.1 58.6 38.8 46.1 47.9 41.9 32.0 55.2 37.5 32.2 60.1 32.8 43.0 31.8

1980

45.5

43.9

34.7 41.2 58.4 41.3

46.1

48.6 54.8 46.0 49.8 45.1 53.2 31.7 54.0 53.8 42.0 59.1 33.5 39.9 33.3

1990

Not available. Average without Germany, Japan, and Spain; each was undergoing war or war preparation at the time.

a

a

8.3

a

a

18.4 10.4 6.1 30.0 8.6

1960 35.7 30.3 28.6 34.6 32.4 30.1 17.5 33.7 29.9 18.8 31.0 17.2 32.2 27.0

15.2 21.8 18.6 29.0 42.4 24.5 25.4 19.0

1937

46.1

42.7

36.6 37.6 49.3 47.1

47.1

51.7 54.3 44.7 54.5 49.0 52.9 36.2 49.9 45.5 43.3 64.7 37.6 41.9 33.3

1996

Sources: Washington, DC, International Monetary Fund, various years, Government Statistics Yearbook. Data for Israel, Jerusalem, Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel, various years.

b

a

Total average

Average

Australia Ireland Israel New Zealand

8.3

5.7

a

a

a

Average

13.3 27.6 25.0 22.5 14.8 13.5 13.7 9.3 8.1 4.6 26.2 7.0

a

17.0 14.8 11.1 8.3 9.0 8.3 8.3 6.3 2.7 12.7 1.8

a

12.6 10.0 11.9 8.8 9.1 3.7

9.4 3.9

a

14.7

a

Austria Belgium Canada France Germany Italy Japan Netherlands Norway Spain Sweden Switzerland Britain United States

a

1920

a

1913

a

1870

Table 2.1 Government expenditure, selected countries, 1870 –1996 (percent of Gross Domestic Product)


26


with its attendant centralization and excessive power predicament at the expense of accountability and transparency. In western democracies, the trend toward big government has been universal irrespective of the type of regime. A century ago, government provided a handful of basic public goods, such as defense, law and order, and elementary infrastructure, and collected taxes for them. The scope of government activities and its size remained relatively small by modern standards until well into the twentieth century. Despite the election of governments in the late 1970s in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Israel publicly committed to retrenching the size and scope of government, the growth trend was not reversed. A major and widely used measure of government size is the ratio of government expenditure to the economy’s total expenditure or total output. Table 2.1 shows that at the beginning of the twentieth century government expenditure in industrial countries accounted for less than onetenth of national income. At the end of the century, in the same countries, the government’s share of output approximated one half. The measure reveals general trends and changes over time, although it is not a comprehensive one as it tends to ignore off-budget spending and it underreports activities of public enterprises. Additional measures of the size of government, such as government employment and the scope of regulation, reveal similar trends of growth (Peters, 1995). In fact, it has become extremely difficult to delineate the precise size and scope of government. A large amount of government expansion is through policy instruments such as direct loans, loan guarantees, grants, insurance, tax incentives, subsidies, contracts, and the establishment of quasi-public organizations for the provision of goods and services. This indirect expansion of the so-called ‘third party government’ or the ‘third sector’ has further muddled the already blurred boundaries between the public and the private sectors, making even a general estimation of the scope of government activities a formidable task.

The rationalization of executive power The growth of government has been accompanied by the politicalorganizational persuasion of rationality and legal authority along the


general lines masterfully articulated by Max Weber (1947). In large complex organizations, organizational size has consistently been shown to constitute the major antecedent leading to the institutionalization of the well-familiar organizational and procedural attributes of Weberian ideal-type bureaucracy: permanence, differentiation, specialization, formalization, hierarchical authority, and career structure based on merit and/or seniority (Hage, 1980). These have been well legitimized and internalized, notwithstanding empirical withincountry variations, in modern organizational society in order to enhance overall coordination and attain effectiveness and efficiency. Despite a large body of criticism regarding the adverse consequences of Weberian bureaucracy ‘the vast majority of large organizations are fairly bureaucratic, and for all but a few a rational-legal form of bureaucracy is the most efficient form of administration known’ (Perrow, 1986, 5). The bureaucratization of government, irrespective of constitutional form and regime type, has also emanated from the Weberian organizational design inspired primarily by the persuasion of rationality and legal forms. Indeed, government bureaucratization has been taken as a central identifying characteristic in the development of the modern state in general (Tilly, 1975) and modern democracy in particular. The primary organizing principle of the state apparatus in the consolidated democracy is, according to Linz and Stepan (1996, 15) for example, the rational-legal bureaucracy securing ‘normative support from civil society for rational-legal authority and its attendant monopoly of legitimate force.’ The legal-rational paradigm as the basis of legitimacy in governance emerged as a universal response to the recurrent quest for effectiveness and efficiency faced by a large, expanding, and increasingly complex government. Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy provided both the ideational rationale and the more operative organizational rules for attaining the elusive goal of maximum efficiency throughout government. Critical research has shown that rational-legal characteristics may lead to conflict and inefficiency, especially if authority based on expertise attempts to replace hierarchical authority, and that the efficiency of allocation of public bureaucracies defies meaningful assessment in the absence of markets and competition (e.g. Loasby, 1976; Jackson, 1983). Yet, administrative reforms have been generally targeted at strengthening the

28


institutionalization of the legal-rational design as it is still widely presumed to maximize government effectiveness and efficiency. The predominance of the bureaucratic paradigm in government has been primarily due to the lack of a rival competing paradigm for coping with environmental uncertainty and the bounded rationality of decision-makers. As Simon (1957, 196) has persuasively argued, ‘Human behavior in organizations is best described as “intendently rational.” ’ Complete rationality is usually frustrated by a variety of limitations such as skills, habits, values, and unranked preferences, but most significantly by incomplete knowledge and information. Government decision-makers cannot anticipate the unintended consequences of their major decisions. Nor are they always able to precisely determine which course of action adheres with their preferences most completely. Due to their bounded rationality and the environmental uncertainty within which they inevitably operate, the bureaucratic paradigm has provided a reasonable rationalization for institutionalizing a large measure of procedural stability, organizational continuity, hierarchical control, and command of information. At the same time and politically more profound, the bureaucratic paradigm has served the political purpose of legitimately expanding and centralizing the powers of the executive branch in general and of political executives in particular. In other words, political decisions concerning the structuring and restructuring (i.e. new rules) of executive power have a considerably higher likelihood of being accepted when rationalized and advocated in terms of enhancing government effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability. Historically the emergence of the modern cabinet in many West European democracies was the upshot of administrative-political reforms rationalized in terms of the bureaucratic persuasion and drawing heavily on the British model. Britain’s efficient secret was the outcome of sweeping organizational and political reforms officially designed to achieve administrative integration and government effectiveness. Through the jurisdictional expansion of the treasury’s authority to control not only the government budget, finances, and auditing but also the civil service system (Raphael, 1964) along with the treasury organizational centralization and direct subordination to the cabinet, political power in government was drastically restructured. At the same time, the authority of the cabinet over the


executive branch as well as over the indecisive, debating, and organizationally inefficient parliament was established. Surely, the power of party leadership was also expanded and centralized as the consequence of the administrative restructuring. The independence of backbenchers was constrained through party discipline. Backbenchers became increasingly dependent on their parliamentary leaders in their newly designated powerful roles as members of cabinet to make public policies that would assist their reelection. Party discipline has also been used to promote hierarchical party organization, centralization, and cohesion. Furthermore, as the practice of the government’s dependence on the confidence of the parliamentary majority has been institutionalized, national rather than local issues replaced the policy agenda and parties’ platforms with the cabinet leadership increasingly monopolizing the legislative initiative at the expense of parliament. As a result, the organizationally more coherent and more centralized mass party could appeal with national issues and policies rather than parochial concerns to the electorate and compete more efficiently in the general elections. As Shugart and Carey (1992, 169) point out, ‘The party has a “brand name” by which to identify itself to the voters,’ and the voters’ choice of parliamentary candidate is in fact also a choice of political executive. As government has expanded and as policy-making has become increasingly complex, specialized, interdependent, and concentrated in the executive, the cabinet system consisting of a large network of cabinet committees has replaced the small cabinet in which the norms of collegiality and collective responsibility were deeply entrenched. In parliamentary systems, cabinet committees rather than the cabinet as an executive decision-making body increasingly make policy and administrative decisions based on their delegated authority without needing to obtain cabinet approval. In Britain, many decisions made by cabinet committees are not even reported to the cabinet. As James (1992) points out, since the early 1980s, cabinet committees have made virtually all decisions. Few matters have been deliberated and settled by the cabinet, leading to the erosion of its policy-making roles and transforming it into a consultative body where selected committees’ policy decisions are reported and discussed but rarely altered. The cabinet’s role in maintaining the political-organizational cohesion of government through collective responsibility has also

30


declined. Although this institutional constraint has been modified over the years, it has served the purpose of compelling the cabinet to present to the public and parliament a united front. Traditionally collective responsibility prohibited ministers from publicly disagreeing with government policy or from criticizing the actions of the prime minister in order to maintain the cohesion of its majority. However, as ‘the first among equals’ executive practice changed, the task of maintaining government cohesion has shifted to prime ministers who more commonly use their discretionary authority to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers. For example, in order to make her cabinet more cohesive and loyal, Margaret Thatcher reshuffled it in 1989, replacing 12 out of 21 ministers.

Political manager and the organization of office The shift of power from the legislature to the executive coupled with the inherent complexities of running big government has led to a certain reorientation of executive roles. In addition to the traditional roles, the sheer management of the executive branch has turned into a formidable task, leading to a greater emphasis on the managerial roles and skills of political executives. Studies of presidential and prime ministerial administrations underscore the significance and organizational difficulties inherent in managing, let alone leading, the executive branch. Indeed, political executives face a keen dilemma. They seek singular control of information and public policy decisions but are forced to work through a collective institutional mechanism. The diversity of specialized staffs, organizational and political interests and loyalties make it difficult for political executives to gain either the information or the control they seek. Political executives are faced with the problem that they do not control the collective organization, although the bureaucracy has considerable influence over many of their decisions. As Weber (1947, 338) insightfully observed, ‘When those subject to bureaucratic control seek to escape the influence of existing bureaucratic apparatus, this is normally possible only by creating an organization of their own which is equally subject to the process of bureaucratization.’ In other words, in order to control the central bureaucracy presidents and prime ministers establish their own bureaucracies.


However, bureaucracies are not systems of organization created for democratic governance but rather systems of control. Consequently, the problems of accountability and transparency intensify, leading to a stronger sense of ambivalence toward executive power. In the United States, the federal bureaucracy, despite several organizational reforms, has remained to a large extent structurally fragmented, ‘an unmanaged affair, weak in the central executive apparatus and extensive in horizontal links to the larger political society’ (Heclo,1984, 30). The practice of public administration is still reflected in the spirit and words of the Brownlow Committee Report on Administrative Management of 1937 and the Federal Reorganization Act of 1939, two core documents representing the rational bureaucratic paradigm. The Reorganization Act, which has since been superseded by similar statutes, identified the main purposes of the federal administrative structure as economy, efficiency, consolidation according to major purposes, reduction in the number of agencies, and elimination of overlapping and duplication of effort. In addition to the overwhelming difficulties involved in managing and directing the vast federal bureaucracy, the very presidential powers over the executive branch are limited since they are shared both with congress and the courts. The political-organizational response of presidents, beginning in 1939 but escalating since the late 1950s, has been to rely on the largely expanded (over five hundred in the 1990s) differentiated and specialized White House staff systems at the service of the president. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the modern staffing system in the White House and Eisenhower formalized, professionalized, and institutionalized it. In his words, ‘Organization cannot make a genius out of an incompetent … On the other hand, disorganization can scarcely fail to result in inefficiency and can easily lead to disaster’ (1963, 114). In the process of expansion and bureaucratization, the White House aggregated considerable power. By the 1970s, it had clearly become more than the president’s personal office, ‘developing some distinct interests of its own and frequently working at cross purposes with the intent and needs of the president’ (Wayne, 1978, 60). Indeed, presidential performance has become heavily dependent on the workings of his staff, the organization of which reflects both the

32


style and work habits of the incumbent president as well as more enduring structural attributes such as specialization, differentiation, formalization, and hierarchy. As Kernel (1989, 197) points out: The modern White House staff is the cumulative product of presidents’ strategic adaptations to an evolving political community. Presidents seeking responsiveness probe for new power … The cumulative result of presidential encroachment has been the steady centralization of policymaking within the White House. Internally, it has taken the form of increased work, which in turn has stimulated the growth of staff and the subdivision of work into more specialized tasks. In prime ministerial regimes, the organizational designs of the prime minister’s office have been more variable reflecting the constitutional, institutional, and political roles that they perform. Prime ministers who aspire to make a policy difference have more aides and larger staffs than prime ministers who have few executive aspirations. Usually personal, political, and policy aides link the prime minister to cabinet ministers, to top civil servants, to the legislature, to the party, and to the media. Moreover, prime ministers who take proactive roles in substantive policy-making have larger and more specialized staffs serving within the prime minister’s office or department. In Britain the creation of the Cabinet Secretariat in 1916 resulted in the centralization of policy-making to the benefit of prime ministers. The cabinet office is composed of organizationally differentiated and specialized units with their staffs being responsible for ensuring ‘the flow of information through the Cabinet and its committees, to take minutes, to record Cabinet conclusions and to ensure they are circulated to those entitled to receive them …’ (Burch, 1988, 38). The units are headed by the cabinet secretary appointed by the prime minister and working closely with him or her. Although the cabinet office was created to serve the cabinet as a whole, in fact it has evolved as a significant resource for the prime minister. Prime ministers have also attempted to adapt by instituting the cabinet committee system consisting of ministers appointed by the prime minister, and by centralizing the civil service. In Israel, the evolution of executive power has also been closely associated with administrative-political reforms. Following national


independence, the state with its almost all-encompassing functions and activities was consolidated thus strengthening the power of the political center. The political parties and the large, central and local public bureaucracies intervened as the major organizations in the state consolidation process. In the early years of independence politicization was widespread with administrative positions being nearly identical to partisan positions, and in many cases the very top administrators were also politicians rather than professional civil servants. In a few cases, government ministries could be hardly distinguished from party cells providing public goods and services chiefly to party members. Patronage practices played an important part in galvanizing the parties into action, just as historically they did in other democracies (Riggs, 1964, 128). As constitutionalism in the form of a legal culture has been increasingly accepted and respected by the political elites, rationallegal bureaucratic principles have been slowly institutionalized as the primary organizing normative rule in society. In state institutions, more universalistic, merit-based, professional norms have been replacing the all-encompassing party patronage practices. In the late 1950s and the 1960s administrative reforms aimed at secularizing and professionalizing the civil service through public tenders, competitive examinations and regulations for political neutrality were introduced (Nachmias and Rosenbloom, 1978). The secularization reforms have replaced the partisan sources of legitimizing executive power and centralization. However, in contrast to other parliamentary democracies, no other competing autonomous centers of political power developed. The prime minister and the cabinet maintained control of the Knesset. The absence of a written constitution and a bill of rights meant that the courts lacked the authority to strike down acts of the Knesset. Local government was created by central government and has remained highly dependent on the executive through legislation, administrative decrees, and practice. Foreign and domestic crises have reinforced the centralized power of the executive either through administrative decrees or through legislation. For example, the platform legislation of 1985 (Hok Ha-hesedim), passed by the Knesset as an economic emergency measure to effectively combat the severe economic crisis in the 1980s, has remained intact despite the impressive economic recovery. This crisis-motivated legislation has

34


strengthened the centralization of the national budget process enabling the cabinet through the ministry of finance, the most powerful cabinet ministry, to strengthen its control over policymaking at the expense of the Knesset. The Act has been used by prime ministers and cabinets for a variety of political purposes, not just purely budget-related issues. The chief rationalization for the continuing use of the platform legislation of 1985 has been that centralization and firm control by the ministry of finance improve the effectiveness and efficiency of government (Nachmias and Klein, 1999).

Conclusion Legislatures in most western democracies have been unable to withstand the pressures that have led to executive dominance in politics in general and the policy cycle in particular. To a degree, because of its constitutional structure and political culture, the United States is an exception to this pattern. Modernization, government growth, bureaucratization, and the advent of mass parties in response to mass suffrage have contributed to the expansion and centralization of executive power. Political parties have served to aggregate the demands of the electorate and constrain the freedom of individual action by legislators. Increasing interest-group demands have generated the need for an extensive policy-making, implementing, and regulatory executive. The more extensive, the more complex, and the more interdependent the measures of public policy, the greater the difficulty of the large, popularly elected assembly, meeting on a non-continuous basis with a scarcity of independent information and policy analysis capabilities, to maintain effective and accountable involvement in the policy process. Although in democracies executive power is almost universally agreed to be a modern necessity, its rationalization along the bureaucratic paradigm has resulted in a strong sense of ambivalence and considerable disagreement on how to balance democratic accountability and transparency with government effectiveness (Rose, 2001).

3 Prime Ministerial Power: Resources and Constraints

Prime ministers are the central political actors in Israel. While they may share power with party allies and coalition partners, or be stymied by these same actors at critical moments, the agenda is there to be set by prime ministers, and the pace of events is theirs to attempt to control. A prime minister is more likely to be overwhelmed by the power of office than restrained by the checks and balances on it. Prime ministers have been pivotal throughout Israel’s history, and the electoral reform which instituted the direct election of the prime minister fortified this reality. The position of the prime minister is of supreme political importance, and the various networks of political contest and dispute usually end up on his desk or close to it. The prime minister is head of the executive branch and the cabinet, and as such has enormous influence on the coalition that dominates the Knesset. Prime ministers are also the heads of their parties, a formal position that enhances their political power. Between 1996 and 2001 prime ministers were directly elected by the voters. Prior to the reform the Knesset elected the prime minister in the classic style of parliamentary democracy. The executive branch was constitutionally defined as a cabinet government headed by a primus inter pares prime minister. As a consequence of the reform, the prime minister was constitutionally elevated to primus in relation to the cabinet. Under both regimes, but more categorically following the reform, the prime minister was given the authority to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers, to set the jurisdictional responsibilities of ministries, and to reorganize their functions and structures. Moreover, the prime minister has the power to 35

36


appoint, with the cabinet’s approval, the heads of unelected powersharing institutions such as the governor of the Bank of Israel, the attorney-general, and the director of the Mossad (the intelligence agency). The reform also granted the prime minister the authority to cast the deciding vote in the case of a tie in cabinet decisions. Under the old regime, coalition formation depended entirely on the strength of the parties in the Knesset. The President of the State, after consulting with leaders of the parties, asked a member of the Knesset, usually the leader of the largest party, to attempt to form a governing coalition. The party leader was granted 21 days (with a possible extension of 21 additional days) to form a coalition, present it to the Knesset, announce its general policy outlines, and gain the Knesset’s vote of confidence. If the attempt to form a coalition failed, the president appointed another candidate after consulting once again with the parties’ leadership. In such a case, the new presidential appointee was required to form a governing coalition and win the Knesset vote of confidence within 14 days. The prime minister is both empowered and constrained by three major institutional principles: dependence on the confidence of the Knesset; the powers conferred to the prime minister by law; and the collective responsibility of the cabinet. The cabinet secretariat and the office of the prime minister are administrative units that provide additional resources. The reform amplified the power of the prime minister by skewing these organizing principles even more in favor of the prime minister at the expense of the cabinet and the Knesset. The repeal of the law in 2001 reinstated a single ballot parliamentary system. Between 1948 and 2001, 11 persons (ten men and one woman) have served as prime minister. Seven were born in Eastern Europe, and four (Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon) in Israel to parents with East European backgrounds. Most became prime minister at a relatively advanced age following a long political career in partyrelated political work. Most of them (Sharett, Rabin, and Shamir are the exceptions) were also the head of their political party (see Table 3.1). Ben-Gurion was the undisputed leader and Sharett a substitute prime minister. Only after Ben-Gurion’s departure from office did two of his close associates, Eshkol and Meir, win office. Rabin, Netanyahu, and Barak were personifications of the second generation of Israeli

Prime Ministerial Power 37

Table 3.1 Israel’s prime ministers Prime Minister

Term as prime minister

Party

Major events

David Ben-Gurion 1886–1973

1948–53

Mapai

Declaration of Independence, 1948

Moshe Sharett 1894 –1965

1953–55

Mapai

Lavon Affair

David Ben-Gurion

1955–63

Mapai

Sinai Campaign, 1956

Levi Eshkol 1895–1969

1963–69

Mapai; Labor

Six Day War, 1967

Golda Meir 1898–1978

1969–74

Labor

War of Attrition, 1969 Yom Kippur War, 1973

Yitzhak Rabin 1922–95

1974 –77

Labor

Disengagement agreements with Egypt

Menachem Begin 1913–92

1977–83

Likud

Peace treaty with Egypt, 1979 Lebanon war, 1982

Yitzhak Shamir 1915–

1983–84

Likud

Economic crisis

Shimon Peres 1923–

1984 –86

Labor

Withdrawal from Lebanon, Economic stabilization plan

Yitzhak Shamir

1986–92

Likud

Intifada, 1987 Madrid Conference, 1991

Yitzhak Rabin

1992–95

Labor

Oslo Accords, 1993 Peace treaty with Jordan, 1995

Shimon Peres

1995–96

Labor

Military action in Lebanon

Benjamin Netanyahu 1996–99 1949–

Likud

Bar-On Affair Wye Plantation Agreement

Ehud Barak 1942–

1999–2001

One Israel (Labor)

Withdrawal from Lebanon, 2000

Ariel Sharon 1928–

2001–

Likud

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politics: Israeli-born of East European origin, with a relatively brief professional political career before taking office, and after long and illustrious military careers (much less so for Netanyahu). The Mapai party leadership stood in the way of other candidates of Rabin’s generation because their reputations were sullied in the early phases of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and/or because they were associated with other factions of the labor movement. The potential candidate Moshe Dayan was associated with the Rafi party and Yigal Allon with Ahdut Haavoda. Begin’s victory in 1977 brought the last of the prime ministers to office who had a leadership role in politics since the establishment of the state. Born in Poland, a lawyer by training, a veteran, skillful Knesset leader, Begin twice led his party to electoral victory after eight consecutive unsuccessful attempts. Netanyahu and Barak won the office primarily as a consequence of the new electoral system that, among other things, diminished the traditional influence of party leadership over the selection of prime ministerial candidates.

The prime minister and the Knesset The relationship between the Knesset and the prime minister as chief executive under the direct election rules was one of a ‘balance of terror’ in which each could dismiss the other. The Prime Minister could dissolve the Knesset with the agreement of the president of the country. Under those rules, the Knesset was empowered to dismiss the Prime Minister by expressing no-confidence in the prime minister with a vote of 61 Knesset members at least, or by failing to adopt the annual budget within three months of its submission. In such cases, new elections for both Prime Minister and Knesset were to be held within 60 days. The Knesset can dismiss the Prime Minister and remain in power if a vote of no confidence is sustained by at least 80 (two-thirds of 120) of its members. The Knesset can remove the Prime Minister if he or she ceases to be a Knesset member, becomes incapacitated, or is impeached for a criminal offense. The prime minister on his part could resign. In these cases ‘special elections’ for the Prime Minister were to be held. The cabinet as a collective entity, however, cannot dissolve itself and thereby dissolve the Knesset. The longevity of the


term of the cabinet, and in fact its very existence, is contingent upon the prime minister. It was Barak’s resignation which brought about the special elections for the prime minister in 2001 and Sharon’s landslide victory. The direct electoral law transformed the regime into a unique, albeit problematic, combination of parliamentary system with presidential attributes. Elections to both the legislature and the executive were held concurrently. The prime minister was elected directly by the eligible voters for a tenure of four years, however, early elections for both the prime minister and the Knesset could be called by the Knesset. A prime minister who served for seven consecutive years could not run for re-election, but there is no term limit on Knesset membership. Because of the extraordinary roles of the prime minister as chief executive and head of the party in the parliamentary elections, the resources under his or her control are considerable. At the same time, the reform created new ambiguities and additional political opportunities, perpetuating many practices of the prior regime. The dependence of the prime minister and the cabinet on a legislative majority continue to constrain even the directly elected prime minister. However, this dependence has turned into a valuable resource for the chief executive. Governments in parliamentary democracies are fully controlled by the legislature in a formal sense, but in practice parliament is often reduced to a staging ground since the executive becomes the locus of political power (Laver and Schofield, 1990). This was the case in Israel prior to the reform. The reform eroded the Knesset’s power over governance and policy-making and concentrated even more formal and informal power in the hands of the executive. The reform, summarized in Table 3.2, strengthened the formal powers of Israeli prime ministers vis-à-vis the Knesset by instituting dual legitimacy. Under the old system the legislature possessed considerable constitutional powers and control over government. Following the reform, legislative and executive powers became separate yet intertwined. While provisions of the reform empowered the Knesset in such matters as subsidiary legislation and the declaration of a state of emergency, prime ministerial powers were strengthened even more. The cardinal changes were that the designation of the prime minister became crystal clear, and that the prime minister was afforded a

Primus inter pares A Knesset member (usually the leader of the largest party) appointed by the president to form a government Prime minister appoints ministers. Since 1981 prime minister authorized to dismiss ministers

Knesset must approve new prime minister New elections can be called by Knesset Government is subject to parliamentary confidence by simple majority vote

Unlimited

Position of the prime minister

Appointment of prime minister

Ministerial appointments

Consequences of prime minister resignation

Prime minister dissolution power

Parliamentary confidence

Tenure of the prime minister

Before direct election (1949–96)

Failure to pass budget leads to elections of Knesset

Failure to pass budget leads to elections of Knesset and and prime minister

Unlimited

Constructive vote to no-confidence; alternative candidate must be designated before vote of no-confidence

Cannot be re-elected after seven years in office

)

Prime minister can dissolve Knesset in consultation with the president

As before reform

As before reform

As before reform

Primus inter pares

After direct election (2001–

Prime minister and cabinet require parliamentary confidence

Prime minister can dissolve Knesset in consultation with the president

New elections held for prime minister

Prime minister appoints 7–17 ministers subject to Knesset’s approval. Prime minister and/or Knesset can remove ministers. Limits on size of cabinet removed in 1999

Prime minister is elected directly by the voters

Primus

Direct election (1996–2001)

Table 3.2 Constitutional framework of prime-ministerial governance: before and after the direct election reform



higher degree of legitimacy than was the case in the former parliamentary system. In the past the fortunes of prime ministers depended on legislative coalitions; under the reform the mandate was derived directly from the people. However, the prime minister remained dependent on the Knesset for confidence and for passing legislation originating in the executive. These unique legislature–executive branch relations made the Israeli case different from the typical parliamentary one, yet the regime did not reflect the principles of separation of powers characteristic of presidential systems. The prime minister had to be the head of an electoral list, and as such, the prime minister was invariably a member of the Knesset. The reform law left the Knesset with a measure of control through coalition maneuverings as in the past, but without having the additional leverage for counterbalancing the power of the executive with a credible threat of no confidence. This new institutional order provided the setting for the downfall of the Netanyahu government in 1999 and the calling of early elections. Rather than risking the loss of a confidence vote in the Knesset, Netanyahu opted for early elections. Barak did the same and brought about special elections for the prime minister, only to be beaten badly by Sharon and drummed out of office. Both Netanyahu and Barak resigned from the Knesset and from political life (at least temporarily) upon their defeat.

The prime minister, cabinet, and ministers The principal constraint on the prime minister in parliamentary regimes is the constitutionally limited scope for discretion in decision-making. Although prime ministers are the most visible, most powerful, and most important politicians, they lack specific statutory powers and therefore must largely act through others (Thomas, 1998). Prime ministers are superior to cabinet ministers in a number of ways: they attain legitimacy as a result of their direct election; they have the power to appoint and dismiss ministers and to set and reorganize the jurisdictions of ministries; and they have the authority to cast the deciding vote in the case of a tie in the cabinet. One of the first activities of prime ministers upon their election is to form the government. In Israel this has always involved coalition formation because no single party has ever won a majority of the seats in the Knesset. During their tenure in office prime ministers

42


may dismiss ministers, appoint new ones, reshuffle ministers, and reorganize ministries. Yet cabinet ministers are appointed by their parties and are expected to impose party discipline in Knesset votes. Generally prime ministers do not interfere with the selection of ministers by their coalescing parties, notwithstanding Golda Meir’s exceptional refusal to appoint Yitzhak Rafael to her cabinet. Until 1981 the prime minister did not have the formal power to dismiss a minister; however, in practice, incumbent ministers could be pressured by the prime minister to resign. Moshe Sharett’s resignation in June 1956 is an example of a minister who resigned from the cabinet in response to the prime minister’s request. Upon Ben-Gurion’s resuming the role of prime minister in 1955, he appointed the reluctant Sharett foreign minister. Disagreements over defense policy soon emerged, with Sharett advocating a more moderate position than Ben-Gurion. When the position of the secretary-general of Mapai opened, Sharett jokingly offered his candidacy but Ben Gurion insisted he take the position bringing Sharett to resign from the cabinet (Korn and Shapira, 1997). In 1976, prime minister Rabin used as a pretext for early elections the abstention on a no-confidence vote by three ministers from the National Religious Party, in effect firing them from his cabinet. In 1981, new legislation authorized the prime minister to dismiss ministers by stating the intention to do so to the Knesset. A minister’s appointment was to terminate 48 hours later, giving both the prime minister and the minister time to reconsider. The coalition agreement of the National Unity government in 1984 suspended this provision, authorizing the prime minister to dismiss only ministers from his or her own party. Nonetheless, the relations between prime minister Peres and minister Yitzhak Modai of the Likud were so strained that the agreement was stretched to its limits. Only twice did this actually happen in the years before the direct election of the prime minister, and both incidents involved Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The prime minister dismissed Ezer Weizman in December 1989, following a meeting between Weizman and a PLO representative, despite the cabinet’s decision banning such meetings. In March 1990, Shamir dismantled the National Unity government and fired foreign minister Shimon Peres when he learned that Peres, head of Labor, was attempting to bring down the governing coalition in a no-confidence vote and form a new


coalition. The reform made cabinet ministers more directly accountable to prime ministers, thus strengthening prime ministerial power. In 1999, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discharged defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai, knowing Mordechai intended to quit the Likud party and oppose Netanyahu as head of the newly formed Center Party. The electoral reform did not free the prime minister from negotiating with potential coalition partners. Both Netanyahu and Barak accepted the ministers appointed by their respective coalition partners. Unlike Netanyahu, Barak used his prime ministerial power to appoint mostly party loyalists and assigned to them significant portfolios. Clearly, as Donoughue (1987, 13) pointed out regarding the British experience, prime ministers who can lead their colleagues can be in a very powerful position, but they are only as strong as their colleagues let them be. The Israeli cabinet system was initially based on the principle of collective responsibility to the Knesset. However, this norm was praised in public but applied with a great measure of flexibility. Many are the instances of ministers voting against the government in which they serve, especially on controversial issues such as the Camp David accords and the Oslo agreements. The 1992 reform revoked collective responsibility, and established the ministers’ responsibility to the prime minister who is accountable to the Knesset. The essence of collective responsibility was that cabinet members could object to or vote against a cabinet decision, but once taken, they had to support it unless specifically released from their obligation. Ministers were also held responsible for the voting behavior of Knesset members from their party. Once the cabinet was formed, the subsequent work of government required the Knesset’s continued support. The government would be dissolved if it failed to gain the Knesset’s confidence by simple majority vote, if the prime minister resigned, or if a new Knesset was elected. While the reform gave the prime minister formal power to appoint cabinet ministers and to allocate portfolios, in reality coalition-building constraints as well as intra-party politics influenced the choices. Neither Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, nor Ehud Barak in 1999, determined the selection of ministers from the coalition parties that joined their governments. Both had to allocate cabinet positions to the heads of parties which formed electoral alliances

44


with them before the election – Gesher’s David Levy and Tzomet’s Raful Eitan in the case of Netanyahu, and Gesher’s Levy and Rabbi Melchior of Meimad in Barak’s case. Moreover, like prime ministers before them, they both faced pressures from political adversaries in their own respective parties. Netanyahu appointed Dan Meridor to the very powerful ministry of finance, Arik Sharon to the newly created ministry of infrastructure, and Benjamin Begin to the less influential ministry of science. By the following election, Meridor and Begin left the Likud and joined other lists. Barak had political problems placing party leaders such as Uzi Baram, Yossi Beilin, Avraham Burg, and Shlomo Ben-Ami. Both Netanyahu and Barak exercised a great deal of discretion over ministerial appointments and portfolios, attempting to consolidate their power as prime ministers and party heads while alienating prominent party leaders. The reform empowered the prime minister to appoint ministers, while requiring approval by the Knesset of the cabinet as a whole. This left the real locus of authority to approve ministers somewhat vague, since incoming cabinets generally reflect a coalition agreement that includes more than half the members of the Knesset. A minister could be removed by a vote of 70 Knesset members, following a dismissal recommendation by the Knesset’s house committee and a hearing on the floor. The new law set a maximum of 18 ministers including the prime minister, and a minimum of eight, at least half of whom must be members of the Knesset. This provision was intended to reduce the ever-increasing size of the cabinet due to constraints in coalition formation that characterized the 1980s. However, prime minister Barak immediately moved to rescind the limit on the number of ministers upon his election in order to consolidate his power in the cabinet. The law was amended and the restrictions on the size of the cabinet were removed. When the direct election law was repealed, no limitations on the number of ministers was included. Chair of cabinet meetings What actually transpires in cabinet meetings depends to a large extent on the issues involved and the personality and political power of the prime minister. Unfortunately, little is known in a systematic way about the interactions and the group dynamics within the cabinet. The formal procedures are well publicized, and the public is


sometimes aware of the acrimonious debates taking place in meetings when there are intentional leaks or if a debate continues on the evening’s television news or is reported in newspapers. Some research has reported the quantity of cabinet initiated legislation as well as the decisions made. However, most formal and informal aspects of cabinet work, in particular its meetings, remain secretive. The cabinet can be still thought of as a rather formalized institution for the continuation of the political game (Arian, 1998). The issues brought up in weekly meetings are usually those that statutorily require a cabinet decision, such as proposed legislation, and appointments of public officials to the highest ranks of the bureaucracy and other nonelected executive institutions. To make meetings more efficient, the secretariat brings to the cabinet drafts of decisions on proposed appointments. Other issues requiring decisions by the full forum concern the government’s budget, judiciary policies, and events that capture the public agenda. National security issues take substantial meeting time. Usually such issues do not come to a vote but are reviewed and summarized by the prime minister. Similarly most sensitive foreign affairs and defense issues are not brought up for discussion at the full forum or are reported as faits accomplis in the form of a report. Prime ministers are reluctant to raise sensitive issues in large forums to avoid the risk of secured information being leaked to the media. Therefore, many sensitive issues, as defined by the prime minister, are not debated in cabinet, although the ministers are ostensibly held collectively responsible. Often during regular meetings the prime minister will announce that the cabinet takes the role of the ministerial committee for security and foreign affairs in order to take advantage of the censorship regulations on the deliberations. Although prime ministers differ in their styles of chairing cabinet meetings, all attempt to control the outcomes of decisions. Until 1974, prime ministers could usually count on the support of ministers from their party who as a group constituted the cabinet’s majority. Two partisan forums (‘Our Ministers’ and ‘Our Colleagues’) were established in order to coordinate policy stands and present agreedupon partisan lines in cabinet. More recently, as party discipline has weakened, prime ministers use other tactics to control the outcome of decisions, including selected forums of ministerial committees, inner circles, personal persuasion, political payoffs, and ultimately

46


on critical issues the threat of resignation. The supremacy of the prime minister along with the constraints of coalition, electoral, and party politics are always present in the minds and behavior of ministers. Being first and foremost elected politicians they are driven by political considerations as well as by the more general public interest. Ministerial committees Ministerial committees are often delegated the authority to make policy decisions in place of the cabinet. In 1953 Ben Gurion established the cabinet committee system that over the years expanded and became highly institutionalized. At first, four permanent committees were formed: defense, the economy, legislation, and domestic affairs. The committees were to conduct weekly meetings on pressing and major issues relating to the jurisdiction of more than a single ministry, thus freeing the cabinet from detailed and largely technical matters. At the same time, the committee system enabled the prime minister to deal only with committee members rather than the full cabinet. Over the years there has been an increasing tendency to draw more issues into the office of the prime minister, especially those involving cross-ministerial coordination. As of this writing, some fifty ministerial committees have been established overseeing all the areas of the cabinet’s involvement. However, just a few function continuously. The only committee required by law is the ministerial defense committee, established in 1991. Its members include the deputy prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and finance, with the prime minister heading it. Other ministers can be included in this committee but its total membership is not to exceed half the members of cabinet. The 1994 cabinet rules of procedure established seven statutory committees, although some had been established earlier: defense, regulation of classified information, developing towns, privatization, work permits on Jewish holidays, archeological excavations, and religious councils. While ministerial appointments are ‘high politics’ and are highly publicized, appointments to committees are decided in closed circles, and therefore the prime minister is most influential over these appointments. Moreover, the prime minister may participate in any meeting of a cabinet committee and even chair it.


The work of cabinet committees is secret. Government publications listing all the committees, their membership, and the names of appointed public officials who attend the meetings on a regular basis, are unavailable. Public officials that attend cabinet committees on a permanent basis are the attorney-general, and the governor of the Bank of Israel, or their representatives. Also, the top officials of the budget division of the finance ministry attend ministerial committee meetings when financial implications are involved. Information about such meetings occasionally becomes available through the media, although the information is necessarily fragmented and incomplete. Indeed, the deliberations of the cabinet and of ministerial committees are secret by law. However, when conflicts are present it becomes somewhat easier to tell the lineup of players and explain their politically motivated behavior because leaks to an eager press and public are often used in the struggle. The political-organizational intentions of the cabinet committee system were to reduce the overloaded business of the cabinet as a whole, to introduce greater functional differentiation, to foster specialization, and to facilitate inter-ministerial coordination in order to increase government effectiveness and efficiency. Furthermore, in political situations where collective decision-making is called for in order to reach consensus, committee work tends to be more efficient. In 1984, with the electoral tie between Labor and the Likud, a National Unity government was formed. The formula for building the coalition was to create cabinet decision-making forums that adequately represented the two parties, preventing each from taking advantage of the other. Thus the political cabinet was formed in 1985, consisting of five ministers from the Likud and five from Labor, transferring the electoral stalemate from the cabinet into this committee. While such an arrangement has the potential of constraining prime ministers, they still have leverage through their influence over the membership of the committee or by assertively adhering to their positions. A case in point was the May 1985 decision regarding the Taba border dispute with Egypt. The political cabinet was evenly split along party lines on the issue of whether the dispute should be resolved by international arbitration or by direct negotiations with Egypt. Prime minister Peres threatened that if Labor’s position in favor of international arbitration was not accepted, he would either turn directly to the full cabinet for approval, or resign. In the end,

48


the cabinet unanimously passed the resolution presented by the prime minister.

The prime minister as ‘super minister’ The essence of prime ministerial governance is the personal predominance of the prime minister in government decision-making (Dunleavy and Rhodes, 1990, 8). Generally, three possible grand strategies are available to prime ministers to achieve such predominance. The first is the making of broad policy decisions across all possible arenas in which prime ministers take interest. The second strategy is by prioritizing key issues that eventually set the agenda of politics and of government policy. The third alternative is to install a businesslike, decision-solving atmosphere that transfers highly controversial issues into relatively manageable policy options. Each of these strategies subjects cabinet ministers to prime ministerial influence. Prime ministers have been the predominant figures in the Israeli government. While by design the prime minister, prior to the reform, has been primus inter pares, in practice all Israeli prime ministers have been primus. Indeed, the public, the media, and other politicians all expect the prime minister to play a leadership role. Prime ministers who put great emphasis on collegial, collective, and lengthy decision-making processes have been criticized for being indecisive, wavering, and vague. Prime minister Eshkol’s primus inter pares style soon became the subject of his ministers’ criticism and media ridicule. Commonly cabinet ministers ‘look to their premier to give purpose and direction to their collective efforts, to be a leader. They rely on him to oil the wheels of government, to solve problems and to act as an honest broker between ministers in dispute. They look to him to encourage a common sense of purpose between them, to provide the cement that holds the Cabinet together’ (James, 1992, 125). Often the position of Israeli premiers can be understood in terms of the tension between rhetoric and reality. The position was originally defined formally in the Government Yearbook 1949 as primus inter pares, and accordingly the major objective of the office of the prime minister was seen as the organization and coordination of the cabinet. This conception was inspired both by the British tradition


and the Israeli political reality of fragmented political leadership. The political practice of the pre-state era based on consensus building and coalition governments significantly contributed to this rhetoric (Horowitz and Lissak, 1978). The reorganization of the office of the prime minister in 1949 constituted a marked departure from the British design. It transformed the prime minister’s role into head of the cabinet, underscoring his or her supremacy. However, this arrangement has remained ambiguous. On the one hand, Israeli premiers are ranked as ‘super ministers,’ but on the other hand they lack sufficient independent resources, in particular budgets and organizational means, to singularly affect public policies. Moreover, since 1985, in an effort to tame the rampant inflation of that period, a highly bureaucratized and centralized budget process was put in place constraining to a large measure the power of prime ministers over the budgeting of ministries (Dery and Sharon, 1994). Consequently, prime ministers necessarily need the close cooperation of finance ministers and budget directors to secure budget appropriations, and then to channel their initiatives to the appropriate program or through the appropriate ministry. Until the mid-1980s, prime ministers were mostly involved with national security and foreign policy issues, delegating considerable discretion to their finance ministers, offering political backing when needed, and expecting funding for their policy initiatives. In an unfulfilled gesture toward resolving this tension, proposals have been regularly put forward to transfer the powerful budget department from the ministry of finance to the office of the prime minister. The resistance that met these proposals is yet another testimony to the professional-bureaucratic power of nonelected officials in the budget department. As in all democracies, nonelected authorities constitute an integral component of executive governance (see Chapter 4). The secretariat of the cabinet In a formal sense, the secretariat of the cabinet serves the entire cabinet. In reality, however, the prime minister controls the work of the secretariat. The cabinet secretariat was established, following British practice, as an administrative unit accountable to the prime minister and to the director general of the prime minister’s office. It performs

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Table 3.3 Secretaries of the cabinet: 1949–2001 Name of secretary

Years in office

Appointed by

Nature of appointment

Zeev Sherf Yael Uzai Katriel Katz Yael Uzai Michael Arnon Gershon Avner Arie Naor Dan Meridor Michael Nir (acting) Yossi Beilin Elyakim Rubinstein Shmuel Hollander Dani Nave Gideon Saar Itzhak Herzog Gideon Saar

1949–57 1957–58 1958–62 1962–68 1968–74 1974 –77 1977–82 1982–84 1984 1984 –86 1986–94 1994 –96 1996–99 1999 1999–2001 2001

Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Eshkol Eshkol; Meir Meir; Rabin Begin Begin; Shamir Shamir Peres Shamir; Rabin Rabin Netanyahu Netanyahu Barak Sharon

Political Professional/technical Professional/political Professional/technical Professional Professional/technical Political Political Professional/technical Political Professional Professional Political Professional Political Professional

statutory functions specified in the Basic Law: The Government, administrative-political duties, and staff functions assigned to them by the prime minister. On the whole, the staff of about one hundred tenured professional and experienced civil servants has maintained partisan neutrality. Table 3.3 lists the secretaries of the cabinet, their terms in office, the prime ministers who appointed them, and the nature of their appointments. Although many of the secretaries were closely related to the prime minister, not all were party activists. As with most top civil service appointments in Israel (Nachmias, 1991), some secretarial appointments were purely partisan whereas others were more professional. Sherf, Naor, Beilin, Meridor, Nave, and Herzog were political appointees; Katz, Arnon, Avner, and Rubinstein came from the ministry of foreign affairs. Yael Uzai was Ben-Gurion’s private secretary; later she was appointed deputy secretary until promoted to secretary of the cabinet by Prime Minister Eshkol in 1963. The scope of the activities and influence of the cabinet secretary depends primarily on the trust established with the prime minister. Among other things, cabinet secretaries have negotiated details of international agreements and chaired ministerial committees. Golda


Meir appointed Arnon to chair an advisory committee on work permits on the Sabbath and religious holidays, a highly controversial and sensitive political issue upon which the survival of the coalition depended. Begin appointed Naor to chair a ministerial committee on national ceremonies, a topic dear to the prime minister. Beilin initiated the directors-general forum in the mid-1980s. The directors-general met weekly to receive updates on cabinet meetings and to exchange information and ideas on policy issues. The forum was discontinued in the early 1990s for lack of sufficient interest among the directors-general and resistance from the prime ministerial staff. The most significant involvement in foreign affairs occurred during the terms of Rubinstein and Nave, both of whom negotiated with Palestinian representatives on behalf of the Israeli government. The subsequent careers of cabinet secretaries have been associated with the nature of their appointment. All the partisan appointees (except Naor) launched political careers of their own. This was the case with former secretaries who were clearly partisan (Sherf, Beilin, Meridor, and Nave) as well as with several directors-general of the prime minister’s office (Kolleck, Ben-Elisar, and Liberman). The first cabinet secretary, Zeev Sherf, a Mapai activist, assisted Ben-Gurion in molding the prime ministerial institutions and the work procedures of the first cabinet (Sherf, 1959). Initially, he served both as cabinet secretary and director-general of the prime minister’s office. In 1952, these two top positions were organizationally differentiated, and the prime minister appointed Ehud Avriel director-general. Sherf held the position of cabinet secretary until 1957, the longest term in this office. He was then elected to the Knesset and appointed minister of commerce and industry in 1966, and later to other ministries for short terms. Beilin and Meridor were elected to the Knesset and subsequently appointed to ministerial positions. Nave was elected to the Knesset in 1999. On their leaving office, cabinet secretaries recruited from the civil service continue with their professional careers in the service or move to business or to academic life. Elyakim Rubinstein subsequently became the attorney general, and Shmuel Hollander became the civil service commissioner. A prime minister who chooses to work closely with the cabinet secretary can turn this position into a valuable organizational

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instrument serving him or her rather than the cabinet as a whole (Thomas, 1998). Secretaries who have confidential, close relations with the prime minister become the prime minister’s political proxy in the secretariat. The secretary’s loyalty to the prime minister has been somewhat balanced by the more general administrative tasks related to the routine work of the cabinet. While the secretary’s duties are formulated in a rather vague manner, those of the secretariat are listed in detail in the Basic Law: The Government and the cabinet’s manual. The secretariat prepares background material, collects and processes relevant information, and drafts decision proposals for deliberations in the cabinet and ministerial committee meetings. It orders and stores records and minutes of minutes and monitors the implementation of decisions. The secretariat serves as the liaison between the cabinet, the president and the Knesset, and issues formal cabinet press releases. The electoral reform made the secretariat a more valuable resource to the prime minister. Assisted by the secretariat, the prime minister has much more control over the cabinet’s agenda as well as over pertinent information and drafts of policy proposals. The powers to control the cabinet’s agenda and to predetermine the politically inevitable narrow range of policy options have considerably strengthened the directly elected prime minister. Prior to the reform the cabinet prepared its own rules of procedure. Over the years these rules have changed in response to the greater workload and the inherent complexity of executive governance. In 1953 ministerial committees were established and the political cabinet was formed in 1984. In 1994 a major reorganization took place following the recommendations of the secretariat and those of the legislation and law enforcement committee. The most significant change was implemented in 1996, following the first election under the reform. The initial version of the Basic Law: The Government established in 1968 the prime minister’s authority over the entire range of cabinet activity, including its rules of procedure. However, individual ministers were given the right to appeal. The 1992 amendment of the law strengthened the power of the prime minister by subjecting all the rules and procedures of the cabinet to the prime minister’s discretionary authority. Article 1 of the cabinet manual states that ‘the prime minister determines the agenda of cabinet meetings.’ Ministers


can propose items to be included on the agenda but they cannot impose discussion. Such proposals must include clear specification of the policy issue involved, background material, and a draft of the decision that the cabinet is asked to make. When budgetary appropriations are requested, the minister has to enumerate the funds required, and to specify the funding sources along with comments and reservations of other ministers whose jurisdictions are affected by the decision. If expenditures are not already included in the government budget, the minister of finance has to approve them. Every minister whose jurisdiction is directly involved in the decision has to approve or express specific reservations prior to the prime minister’s decision whether to place the request on the agenda. The agenda of a cabinet meeting is determined by the prime minister in consultation with the cabinet secretary. The list of items on the agenda with relevant background information is delivered in sealed envelopes to the ministers’ chambers at least 48 hours prior to the meeting. If needed, it is the secretariat’s responsibility to summon to the meeting experts and other relevant appropriate public officials. Alternatively, a minister can submit an urgent proposal to the prime minister. In such cases, the secretariat is required to prepare the material prior to the meeting. By law a prime minister can override each of these procedures at his or her discretion. The secretariat is responsible for supplying secretarial services to the cabinet and its committees. These include taking minutes, drafting decisions, and counting the votes at the meeting. Later the minutes are distributed to the ministers. The minutes are strictly confidential and remain classified for forty years (those of the defense committee for fifty years). Minutes are archived at the secretariat and can only be reviewed by ministers at the premises. In exceptional cases appointed public officials can gain access to the minutes of meetings that they attended. In effect, the secretariat is the exclusive guardian of the political and organizational memory of Israeli cabinets.

The office of the prime minister The office of the prime minister consists of administrative and professional units that assist the premiers in their official activities and dayto-day work. The prime minister is assisted by the director-general, a

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bureau chief, and advisors and aides on various topics such as the media, political affairs, and economic matters. The prime minister also appoints a military secretary, who serves as his liaison with the military command and the defense ministry. The office’s personnel aid premiers and the directors-general in managing their day-to-day work and in overseeing the implementation of decisions. The office consists of three departments: follow-up, research, information and public affairs. The staff controls the flow of information with other ministries and executive authorities and monitors the implementation of decisions and agreements made by the prime minister. The staff also maintains contacts with ministries, coordinates inter-ministerial policies, and serves as gatekeeper scrutinizing the flow of information and issues and deciding which matters to call to the personal attention of the prime minister. A national security council was established to provide premiers with up-to-date intelligence and professional advice on issues of national security, but its impact on decision-making has yet to be evaluated. The office of the prime minister has evolved in a piecemeal manner rather than by comprehensive organizational design. The overall effect has been a concentration of power in the prime minister’s office. This evolutionary trend can be divided into four distinct phases. The first, between 1949 and 1966, was characterized by the definition and specification of the office’s functions and structures. A second phase of reorganization took place between 1967 and 1977, in which power was concentrated in the office. The third phase, between 1977 and 1992, refined the organizational structures of the office. In the fourth phase, beginning in 1992 and more rapidly since 1996 following the direct election of the prime minister, the personalization of the office became clearly evident. The definition of the prime ministerial office took place between 1949 and 1966, during which time Zeev Sherf and Teddy Kolleck served as directors-general. This first phase paralleled the establishment and the consolidation of the state and its institutions and was characterized by a highly centralized executive. Powerful prime ministers emerged as major crises took place in the initial years of nation building, most clearly seen in prime minister David BenGurion’s centralizing leadership style. The organizational focus was on the demarcation of the office and the explication of the relations between government and nongovernmental organizations that were


actively involved in a variety of policy areas, including education, health, and immigrant absorption. Although the formal definition of the office of the prime minister was minimalist in terms of the organization and coordination of government, Ben-Gurion concentrated immense power in the office. He personally attended to the pressing issues of security and defense, and saw to it that strategic functions and organizations, such as intelligence, communications, state land ownership, national planning, and the civil service commission, were included in the office. Ben-Gurion was also defense minister, and he removed the defense budget from the jurisdiction of the ministry of finance, thus strengthening the prime minister’s control over defense policy. The office of the prime minister took charge of two additional types of activities. One involved the administrative tasks of the cabinet as a whole, mainly those pertaining to the control of information such as the central bureau of statistics and the national archives. The second involved agencies of symbolic importance with less immediate significance to the work of government, such as ethnic arts and issuing commemorative coins and medals. During this phase, most of the organizational changes in the office concerned these activities and were made in a trial and error manner. Functions and units were added and then removed to other ministries and agencies. All the while, the strategic functions of government remained firmly intact and directly controlled by the prime minister. Between 1954 and 1966 the scope of the office of the prime minister increased significantly with the formation of four permanent ministerial committees for economic policy, legislation, interior affairs, and defense. In 1954, the cabinet decided to establish the economic planning and coordination bureau within the office of the prime minister in order to take a more active role in agendasetting and policy-making. The formal definition of the office was revised in the Government Yearbook 1962–3 to better reflect the greater involvement of premiers in economic policy. The reorganization phase of the office took place from 1967 until 1977. This phase was a reflection of the increased scope of the office’s activities and the lack of a coherent organizational structure. Prime minister Levi Eshkol formed a committee to recommend appropriate changes, and subsequently the office was formally organized around four domains under directors-general Yaacov Herzog,

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Mordechai Gazit, and Amos Eran (see Table 3.4). The first domain involved issues that the prime minister personally attended to. The second involved issues of great national importance, such as the development of nuclear power, and the research and development council. The third domain consisted of professional units such as the central bureau of statistics and the state archives that were located for administrative reasons in the office. The fourth domain consisted of units formally located in the office, such as scientific translations, the broadcasting authority, and national parks. In 1971, prime minister Golda Meir criticized the organizational scheme of the office, arguing that it should mainly concentrate on formulating policies and initiating programs without getting directly involved in implementation. Consequently, several executive functions were transferred to other cabinet ministries and executive authorities but the overall organizational structure remained intact. The organizational changes between 1978 and 1992 reflected the shifts in Israeli politics. With the ascension to power of the Likud in 1977, the centralization of the prime minister’s office intensified. Eliyahu Ben-Elisar, later to become Israel’s first ambassador to Egypt, was appointed director-general of the office of the prime minister. Table 3.4 Directors of the office of the prime minister: 1949–2001 Name of director Zvi Sherf Ehud Avriel Teddy Kolleck Yaacov Herzog Simcha Dinitz Mordechai Gazit Amos Eran Eliyahu Ben-Elisar Mattityahu Shmuelevitch Avraham Tamir Yosef Ben Aharon Shimon Sheves Zvi Aldoreti Yvette Liberman Moshe Leon Yossi Kutchik Rafi Peled

Years in office 1949–51 1951–52 1952–65 1966–72 1972–73 1973–75 1975–77 1977–80 1980 –84 1984 –86 1986–92 1992–95 1995–96 1996–97 1997–99 1999–2001 2001–

Appointed by Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion; Eshkol Eshkol; Meir Meir Meir Rabin Begin Shamir Peres Shamir Rabin Rabin Netanyahu Netanyahu Barak Sharon


Soon afterward, subcabinets were formed within the office, headed by ministers without portfolio, to deal with pressing issues. Prime minister Begin formed a social policy council in the prime minister’s office rather than in the ministry of labor and welfare. This politically calculated move was to convey Begin’s sincere commitment to the welfare of the many economically and socially disadvantaged Likud voters. The council was authorized to design and implement rehabilitation programs in disadvantaged communities. Prime ministers continued with the political practice of establishing quasi-ministries in the prime minister’s office. In 1984 –5, a taskforce headed by the minister without portfolio Ezer Weizman replaced the long existing position of the advisor for the Israeli-Arab population. During 1989–90 prime minister Yitzhak Shamir formed a working group for foreign policy issues in order to counterbalance the independent negotiations initiated by Peres, the minister for foreign affairs. After 1992, the prime ministerial office entered a phase of greater personalization of the premiership. Although the electoral reform was implemented in 1996, Rabin in the 1992 election campaign championed the significance of prime ministerial leadership in governance. His electoral list was named ‘The Labor Party Headed by Rabin.’ As prime minister, Rabin’s executive style served as a prototype for subsequent governments. One of Rabin’s first decisions was to form a prime ministerial staff to aid him and he instructed his director-general, Shimon Sheves, to mold government policies according to the prime minister’s priorities. Sheves was Rabin’s close associate and campaign manager, and the extent of his involvement in policy-making was unprecedented not only in procedural, administrative matters but also in substantive issues. Rabin’s view was that the office of the prime minister should initiate policies and tightly coordinate and oversee the implementation of prime ministerial priorities. The power of the office was consolidated and centralized and it became actively involved in a variety of policy initiatives to the extent that cabinet ministers considered this an infringement of their authority and responsibility. In response to Rabin’s request, Sheves tempered his very active interventions in the work of the ministries. Organizationally, the prime minister’s office changed little following the electoral reform. Nevertheless, during the first year of

58


Netanyahu’s government the office intensely intervened in politics and policy-making. Director-general Yvette Liberman, formerly director-general of the Likud, acquired considerable influence in the prime minister’s office and over policy-making. In the wake of a stream of crises involving cabinet ministers, Liberman’s domineering style became a political liability, and Netanyahu replaced him with Moshe Leon, a close political ally in 1997. Barak’s choice of Yossi Kutchik, a professional senior civil servant, as director-general brought a considerably less partisan outlook to the office. Kutchik focused primarily on the initiation and inter-ministerial coordination of domestic policies and programs. Table 3.4 lists the directorsgeneral, their terms in office, and the appointing prime ministers. The advisors With the growing scope of activities of prime ministers, the range of advisory resources in the prime minister’s office has also expanded. Ben-Gurion appointed special advisors on the pressing problems of the formative years of the state, namely economic, infrastructure, and development, the Israeli-Arab minority, housing, state land ownership, and a legal advisor to the cabinet formally positioned in the ministry of justice. Over the years advisors were appointed to consult on those policy issues that the prime minister took special interest in, frequently on the basis of their expertise and professional experience. Advisors who were appointed on the basis of specialized expertise tended to serve longer, and often remained in office under different prime ministers and different governing coalitions. These included advisors on security issues, anti-terrorism, and the Israeli-Arab minority. Advisors in most other policy areas were close political affiliates of the prime minister serving for shorter terms. Upon assuming office, Netanyahu appointed 20 advisors who served as quasiministers, an unprecedented number compared to a maximum of eight in any of the previous governments Advisors are not permanent civil service employees. They are employed under special temporary contracts the terms of which are coordinated with the civil service commission. Civil service regulations limit the contracting of advisors to those services that are not within the sphere of competence of the regular staff of the office of the prime minister. Officially, their work is not to be carried out in


the prime minister’s office, a regulation intended to prevent the overriding of the permanent staff. The civil service regulations limit the number of special advisors that ministers are entitled to appoint, but there are no such restraints on the prime minister. In sum, the transition to the new regime reflected the ongoing processes of centralizing executive governance and concentrating the power of prime ministers at the expense of the Knesset and the cabinet. These processes were initiated and institutionalized during the formative years of nation building and accelerated in response to crises and changes in the political and party systems. At the same time, the institutional design of executive governance is ambivalent toward the powers of the prime minister. Formally the institutional design portrays a strong, centralized hierarchy. The prime minister is the key figure in the political system and at the apex of the executive hierarchy. Prime ministers have ample influence over a large number of institutional resources, including the power to appoint and dismiss ministers, to dissolve the cabinet and the Knesset, and to control the cabinet agenda and ministerial committees. However, the power of prime ministers should not be overestimated. Notwithstanding the electoral reform the institutional logic of the Israeli regime has remained parliamentary. Prime ministers lead the cabinet but they are dependent on the support and collaboration of ministers as the experiences of Netanyahu and Barak clearly show, and on the confidence of the Knesset. Prime ministers are only as strong as they can force their colleagues to let them be.

4 Power-Sharing with Nonelected Authorities

Since the establishment of the state the executive branch has been at the center of Israel’s political development. Foreign and domestic policy-making has been almost exclusively executive-centric with the legislature taking on primarily oversight roles. As we argued in Chapter 2, the institutionalization of executive governance in western democracies has been closely associated with the very evolution of the modern state, its ever-increasing state-encompassing activities, its large size, and the extensive and intensive penetration of the political-bureaucratic machinery into most areas of collective behavior. Although in Israel the more recent trends towards multiculturalism, individualism, economic liberalism, and progress towards a relatively autonomous civil society have eased the grip of the state, political power has remained highly concentrated in the executive with nonelected authorities exercising considerably more power than in the past. The appointed heads of nonelected policy-making institutions, including the top civil servants in defense, intelligence, and finance, the governor of the Bank of Israel, and the attorney general (who also serves as the attorney general to the government) have become an integral part of the Israeli core executive. The state comptroller has emerged as the Knesset’s institutional reaction to executive governance.

Institutional power-sharing In western democracies executive governance involves much powersharing between elected institutions and nonelected authorities. 60

Power-Sharing with Nonelected Authorities 61

Ironically this takes place in an era of democratization where all political authority is expected to derive directly from voters. Perhaps, this ‘democratic deficit’ is the inevitable outcome of executive governance that increasingly relies on nonelected institutions for both the legitimization and the performance of its policies. As government has expanded in size and in the scope of its activities, policy decisions have become increasingly more complex, highly specialized, strongly interdependent, and to a large extent technical in orientation. Correspondingly, the significance of professional, nonelected public officials in the policy-making processes and in their legitimization has dramatically evolved along with their discretionary power. Traditionally, supreme courts or those dealing with constitutional matters, especially those that had roles of judicial and administrative review, and the relatively small public bureaucracies were designed as the major, if not sole, nonelected institutions. Yet the rationalization of executive governance, characterized by greater specialization, organizational differentiation, professionalism and political neutrality as a means for enhancing government effectiveness and accountability has led to the proliferation of nonelected authorities. The delegated authority for discretion of nonelected authorities has reinforced the rationalization of executive governance while at the same time standing in the way of voters and elected officials. Nonelected institutions are created by legislatures (e.g. central banks), political executives (e.g. attorneys general and public prosecutors), or constitutional conventions, depending to a large extent on the type of regime and the country’s unique historical-political practices. However, they have evolved into relatively autonomous professionalpolitical actors in their own right. As they grow in independent resources, institutional expertise, and professional prestige they incorporate distinct organizational boundaries, professional values, operational norms, and ethical codes legitimated by autonomous national and international professional associations in order to separate themselves as much as possible from their initial creators. Professionalism and autonomy in contrast to political expediency are the core values of nonelected public authorities. Nonelected institutions are increasingly independent within government, but obviously they are not independent of it. Consequently

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an inherent tension, occasionally erupting into downright conflict, characterizes the relations between nonelected and elected officials. The very performance of elected political executives and often their political fortunes depend to a large extent on decisions made by nonelected authorities. In most democracies, including Israel, the attorney general has the discretionary authority to define the public interest, to ask for the removal of parliamentary immunity, and to initiate criminal proceedings against elected officials. For example, in 1997 attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein decided not to initiate criminal charges against prime minister Netanyahu and minister of justice Tzachi Hanegbi who were determined by a police investigation to have illegally conspired to appoint Roni Bar-On attorney general of the newly formed government. At times the power of central bankers can make or break a presidency or a prime ministership. Ludwig Erhard and Helmut Schmidt were among the prime ministers whose political downfalls were attributed to poor economic performance resulting primarily from the highly restrictive monetary policy of the greatly autonomous Bundesbank. In 1992, President George Bush blamed the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, for causing the sluggish economy that undermined his reelection bid by stubbornly refusing to lower interest rates. To critics, as Solomon (1995, 26) points out, ‘the fact that central bankers did not stand for election, deliberated in cloistered councils whose members were chosen partly by the private sector, operated almost exclusively behind the scenes at the pinnacles of high finance and politics, performed functions esoteric to most citizens, and enjoyed unique political freedom from the executive or Congress constituted an intolerable “democratic deficit.”’ Indeed, the concentration of power within nonelected institutions has reinforced the more inclusive centralization of executive power. In the following sections we examine the power and the intricate relations between Israel’s two foremost nonelected authorities – the attorney general and the governor of the Bank of Israel – and political officials. In the last section we focus on the expanding significance of the state comptroller in attempting to oversee and occasionally contain executive power.


The attorney general The attorney general, appointed by the government based on the support of the prime minister and the formal recommendation of the minister of justice, is one of the most senior nonelected officials. Attorneys general play a number of important roles in the government. First, they lead public prosecutions; in this capacity, they are designated by the state to enforce criminal law, including appearances in courts in relevant cases. In recent years, due to increasingly heavy workloads, court appearances mostly have been made by their representatives, unlike in the past when the attorney general would personally appear in court. Second, attorneys general represent the State of Israel in legal suits in all proceedings that are not criminal in nature. In their third significant role, attorneys general provide the government and government agencies with legal counsel and regularly attend government meetings. Next, the attorney general provides professional assistance to the government, particularly to the minister of justice, in preparing legislation to be submitted to the Knesset. In this context, the attorney general assesses how proposed bills cohere with other public laws. Finally, the attorney general is responsible for representing the public interest on a variety of additional subjects arising from the provisions of special legislation (Gavison, 1996, 34). The attorney general is the public prosecutor, and also performs advisory and representative functions not necessarily related to public prosecution (Weinrot, 1995, 54). Whereas the law explicitly defines the authority of the attorney general in the role of prosecutor, it neither specifies his or her status nor the areas of authority in his or her role of legal advisor, granting the office a vast measure of discretion. As the domains of legal counsel have expanded considerably over the years, the attorney general’s authority is to a large extent a corollary of evolving legal norms and ethical standards as well as of reactions to social and political developments. The range of issues on which attorneys general have provided legal-professional counsel has dramatically expanded, and their roles of advising the government have made them even more powerful. In fact, since 1977 attorneys general have been regularly invited to participate in cabinet meetings. The multiple roles of attorneys general have expanded their discretionary authority and, as a result, increased their political power.

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Decisions whether to file a legal suit, instructions given to government ministries and other public authorities, and interpretations of what constitutes the public interest, all have far-reaching implications on many aspects of governance and political life in Israel. These include government policy against terrorism and subversive groups; decisions on the personal and political future of elected and appointed officials in general, and Knesset members, ministers, and the prime minister in particular that may determine the survival of government coalitions; and decisions that influence the formation and implementation of public policies on substantive issues such as the privatization of government companies and services with their inevitable consequences on the redistribution of wealth. The attorney general’s decisions have a strong potential to influence public opinion. The substantial power of the attorney-general stems from four principal sources. First, the law explicitly grants him or her a large degree of authority regarding issues that are deeply entrenched in the essence of the democratic state. Attorneys general play a central role in this process through their responsibility to file criminal suits (Kremnitzer, 1996). The second source is the legal norms and political practices that secure the attorney general’s institutional autonomy and independence from those who appoint him, although in the Bar-On affair this principle was violated (discussed in greater detail later in this chapter). These norms and practices include granting the attorney general a lengthened term in office and not replacing him following changes in the governing coalition. Furthermore, to date no attorney general has been dismissed, although attorney general Gideon Hausner resigned due to profound disagreements with justice minister Dov Yosef. Attorney general Yitzhak Zamir was replaced after announcing his intention to retire although he had yet to complete the intricate ‘Bus Line #300 Affair,’ a case that involved the killing of captured terrorists by the Israeli secret service. The third source of authority has evolved over the years and it derives from societal values and legalized norms. In Israel as in other western democracies the prevalent myth sees the law as completely neutral, a strictly professional apparatus that upholds and promotes objective justice thus contributing to societal welfare and progress. Indeed, the law is a fundamental component of the rational-legal persuasion characteristic of the modern democratic state. More specific


sources of authority include the recommendations of public committees on the status of the attorney general that were adopted by the government, such as the Agranat committee report in 1962, and on the rulings of the supreme court. Such rulings are as binding as ordinary laws as long as the Knesset does not pass contrary legislation. The final major source derives from the acquisition by attorneys general of considerable informal authority and influence based on their professional prestige as jurists. Their status is similar to that of supreme court justices. Since the early 1960s, the government embraced the practice that the qualifications of attorneys general should be similar to those required of supreme court justices. The position has been regarded as professional, non-partisan, and presumably devoid of political aspirations. Their authority is boosted by the public expectation that as representatives of the rule of law, attorneys general will oversee the judicious, fair, and accountable work of government. Even former attorney general Zamir, a proponent of the rule of law in its strict sense, accentuated the obligation of the attorney general to promote the rule of law in its broadest sense. Certainly Zamir was well aware of the difficulties inherent in this approach for it entails legalism as well as moral judgments (Zamir, 1986). The transfer of authority from the elected officials to the attorney general is broad, and relates to three major factors. The first historical factor is associated with the socio-cultural developments in Israeli society. The second is specific to the Israeli institutional arrangements concerning the attorney general’s roles. The third factor is in many ways related to the first two, but it also stands on its own. It embodies the very basic philosophical ambiguities inherent in the concepts ‘rule of law,’ ‘legal interpretation,’ and ‘public interest’ that confer extensive discretionary power to the attorney general. With respect to the first factor, the Israeli supreme court has been taking an increasingly active role in a variety of highly controversial public concerns. The reasons for the court’s activism are varied yet in some cases interrelated. The most obvious reasons are the consolidation of big government and its regulatory activities, increased professionalization throughout the economy and society, and the disintegration of the political hegemony established by the founding generation as evidenced in the Likud party’s rise to power in 1977. Other reasons include the erosion of the collectivist ethos, the

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intensification of social and economic cleavages, and the increase in social rifts due to questions of national identity (Kimmerling, 1999). Since elected officials have failed to deal with such politically volatile issues through appropriate public policies and legislation, the court increasingly filled the void. It became the most experienced and credible branch of government in resolving disputes. Moreover, new justices appointed to the court shared a more activist approach to the supreme court’s roles in Israeli society. Changes in legal practices and regulations, in particular in the principles governing the right to appear in court, significantly increased the number of people eligible to appeal to the supreme court and the variety of appeals on which the court was willing to render judgment. Thus a subsidiary process, rapid and multifaceted in nature, gave the court a new, central role in a wide range of governance and policyrelated issues that it had avoided in the past. Supreme court justices also became more extensively involved in public policy and administrative issues, setting criteria that require public authorities to act reasonably, and not, for example, just in good faith. Court justices also became involved in the appointment procedures of senior civil servants and in social-political policies (Mautner, 1994). Furthermore, supreme court justices began to exercise judicial oversight in national security issues, ignoring the self-imposed restrictions that the court had willingly adhered to in earlier years. For example, the court did not hesitate to get involved in questions of military censorship, overruling the censor’s exercise of discretion and permitting the publication of criticisms of the Mossad, or to intervene in the case of admitting women to air force training courses. The 1992 Basic Laws on Human Rights and Dignity and Freedom of Occupation have reinforced these trends. These basic laws strengthened the authority of the supreme court and brought judicial review to a new level by authorizing the supreme court to exercise judicial oversight over Knesset legislation, a radical departure from the previous practice. As governing authorities became more exposed to judicial scrutiny the needs for legal advice and representation increased. Thus the attorney general, the most senior advisor on matters of law and legislation, was increasingly asked to advise and provide representation on an ever-increasing variety of topics, and concurrently the span of


discretionary authority was expanded. Furthermore, the supreme court itself bolstered the attorney general’s formal status by conferring unprecedented authority to a nonelected official. In two rulings supreme court justices determined that the attorney general was the official interpreter of the law with respect to the government, and they stipulated that his or her decision obligates the government as well as other government authorities. Moreover, when attorneys general represent a government authority, they do so according to their understanding of the legal situation, even if they contend that the authority is acting illegally (Gavison, 1998, 85). The institutionalization of the attorney general’s diverse roles into a single position contributes to role ambiguity and to tensions within the office impairing its accountability and transparency. For example, when Knesset member Arye Deri, at that time Shas leader, was indicted, the attorney general performed three roles. As the official responsible for handling the prosecution, the attorney general decided to file an indictment against Deri, and requested the Knesset to remove Deri’s immunity. In his second role, as the senior legal advisor to the government, the attorney general advised the prime minister to dismiss Deri from the government because the indictment was about to be filed. Next, when the prime minister did not need his legal advice, the attorney general refused to represent him in the supreme court, thus putting the prime minister in an unfavorable position during the court’s deliberations in September 1993. The inherent tension among the roles of the attorney general coupled with the inevitable conceptual vagueness of the concepts of law and justice strongly reinforce the power of this nonelected authority. Law and justice are ambiguous concepts with broad implications that change over time and between societies. In its broadest sense, the law guides the attorney general. However, the law is amenable to various and different interpretations influenced by the interpreter’s worldview and values, by his or her professional, socio-economic background, and political inclinations. As a result, the person who presents his rendering of the law to the authorities, and guides and represents them in applying it, wields a great deal of discretion that may also be open to various interpretations. Although the attorney general’s interpretation is subject to judicial scrutiny by the supreme court, in fact the court rarely intervenes. Similarly, in his or her capacity as public prosecutor the attorney general acts to the best of

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his or her understanding and interpretation in a system in which interpretation itself is a central and significant component. Moreover, while a private party in need of legal consultation and assistance can turn to any legal advisory body, government authorities and the government itself are limited. Formally they can obtain legal counsel only from the attorney general and they must be represented by him or her. Furthermore, attorneys general are personally obligated to advance the cause of justice in its broadest sense. Therefore they are involved in a legal relationship that is distinctly different from the relationship between a private party and a private attorney. Even if attorneys general are committed to advancing the government’s interests, their commitment to promote the rule of law is more encompassing than that of an attorney representing a private client (Gavison, 1998, 54; Weinrot, 1995, 54 –5, 58). This reality provides the attorney general with an unusual degree of power and a great deal of influence over executive governance in Israel. Indeed, attorneys general were involved in many significant political events, some of which have shaken the political system, as the following cases exemplify. The Kastner affair in the 1950s evolved as a citizen named Greenwald published a scathing critique of the behavior of Yisrael Kastner, who at the time was spokesman for the ministry of supplies and rationing. Attorney general Cohen decided to file an indictment against Greenwald despite Kastner’s objection. Cohen stipulated that if Kastner did not file an indictment to clear his name, Kastner would have to draw personal conclusions and resign. Pursuant to instructions from the attorney general, a criminal investigation was instigated which led to a public scandal over Kastner’s role in the Holocaust, as well as the role of the Mapai party’s leaders in that era. In the early stages of the trial, Cohen conducted the prosecution himself, reasoning that the public prosecutor was incompetent. On 22 June 1955, the judge ruled that ‘Kastner sold his soul to the devil’ and cleared Greenwald of most charges. Despite sharp criticism from influential politicians, including prime minister Sharett, regarding the rigid position taken by the attorney general, Cohen decided to appeal to the supreme court. This decision inflamed public controversy on an issue that the government had no interest in pursuing, and was reviewed in the government’s weekly meeting on 26 June 1955. Two days later the Knesset debated the affair, and


sharply criticized the ministry of justice and the attorney general. The attorney’s decision to indict Kastner was criticized because it would humiliate the State of Israel. Haim Ariav of the General Zionist party, a member of the Knesset and the governing coalition, publicly announced that in light of the attorney general’s error, his party would abstain in the Knesset’s vote. As a result of this abstention, prime minister Sharett resigned (Gutman, 1995). The impact of Cohen’s controversial decision was extraordinary. It brought back the extremely painful memories of the destruction of European Jewry to the public agenda, and raised critical questions concerning the role of the Zionist leadership in saving Jews. Attorney general Cohen interpreted the law quite literally. This not only caused trouble for the political leadership and the government but also influenced the public discourse on one of the pivotal issues of the Jewish Israeli experience. In other cases, the attorney’s general decision to let the political process unfold without his intervention had no less of an impact. One of the most tragic and complex examples of this hands-off policy was attorney general Michael Ben-Yair’s prosecution policy regarding the political expression of extreme right-wing groups engaged in political protest, until the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Ben-Yair granted extremist groups a great deal of latitude. This decision, in turn, influenced the temper of the public debate in Israel over the Oslo Accords and the government’s policies on political protests. Had indictments been filed against extremists, the political controversy could have been better managed, though it is also possible that indictments might have exacerbated it. In any case, the attorney general’s decision not to file any indictments restricted the ways in which government authorities could react. The fact that the attorney general allowed extreme groups to advocate incitement left the government and its leaders exposed to scathing, at times incendiary, public criticism. Following the assassination of prime minister Rabin, the attorney general decided upon a much stricter prosecution policy. The conceptual ambiguity over the interpretation of the ‘rule of law’ is clearly evident in the attorney general’s policy of filing indictments against elected officials, including the prime minister. In these cases, the attorney general’s decisions had sweeping implications on the political future of elected officials, political parties,

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and governments. Such was the case when the attorney general decided to file an indictment against cabinet minister Arye Deri. He approved prime minster Rabin’s decision to include Deri in his government pending Deri’s resignation upon formal indictment. Later, the attorney general changed his decision demanding that Deri resign earlier. Immediately following his request to the Knesset to revoke Deri’s immunity, the attorney general asked Rabin to fire Deri so that an indictment could be filed. However, Deri did not have to resign until the indictment was actually filed. Rabin agreed with the attorney’s general interpretation, a decision that led to the collapse of his governing coalition. Another stirring political case of the attorney general’s immense political influence was the 1997 decision not to indict prime minister Netanyahu in the Bar-On affair. The attorney general is the only official authorized to file an indictment against a prime minister, a decision that is likely to determine the prime minister’s political future and possibly affect the entire political system. The Bar-On affair is particularly instructive, because the senior staff in the prosecution were not in complete agreement with the attorney general’s decision not to indict Netanyahu (Ha’aretz, 23 April 1997), underscoring the fact that legal interpretations tolerate opposing positions. The Bar-On affair is instructive of forces at work in the system and deserves extended treatment. At the end of 1996, a few months after Netanyahu’s election, attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair announced his intention to retire from public life. Prime minister Netanyahu and minister of justice Tzachi Hanegbi were not disappointed by this development, anxious to appoint their ‘own’ attorney general with views closer to their right-wing ideology. From this familiar beginning in governments in transition, the story developed in an ugly fashion, leading to the recommendation by the police that the investigation of the prime minister continue and that others, including the minister of justice, be indicted for suborning justice and for disregarding their oaths of office. In the end, a new attorney general concluded that there was insufficient evidence for the continuation of the investigation or for the indictments, save one. Attorney general Rubinstein wrote in his report: Nothing in the history of the State of Israel is similar to this affair in terms of its sensitivity, the ranks of those involved, or the


heavy shadow of suspicion that there was a premeditated attempt to threaten the rule of law in a manner well-known in certain countries by appointing an attorney general, the chief of the prosecution system, someone who might be beholden to certain individuals who do not hold the public interest or the rule of law as matters of prime concern … The interweaving of politics and law is a slippery and dangerous area. The use of political power to further personal interests is a slope with disastrous potential. (Elyakim Rubinstein, ‘Decision of the Attorney General in the Matter of the Appointment of Roni Bar-On as Attorney General,’ 20 April 1997) This is the story as determined by the police investigation and other sources. It began on 2 December 1996, when Ben-Yair resigned as the attorney general after some three years in office. The prime minister and the minister of justice accepted the resignation, to take effect on 1 January 1997. On 10 December 1996, minister of justice Hanegbi listed in a speech to the Knesset three criteria for the next attorney general. They were (1) a strong backbone, integrity and an upright character; (2) extraordinary legal expertise; and (3) a basic affinity to the ideology of the party which appointed him or her. In the meantime, the search for a successor to Ben-Yair had begun in earnest. The appointment of Roni Bar-On as attorney general occurred at the weekly cabinet meeting on 10 January 1997. Soon after the meeting began, a ‘Miscellaneous’ item was added by the prime minister to the agenda, and that was to be the appointment of the attorney general. Netanyahu announced that he had decided to appoint Roni Bar-On to the office and asked the cabinet’s approval. This caused much consternation since some of the ministers had never heard of the candidate, others had their reservations about him for this position, and none of them had been given a chance to consider the appointment before the surprise announcement at the cabinet meeting. They asked that the matter be deferred until another meeting, but under pressure from Netanyahu and Hanegbi, the cabinet approved the appointment with one minister voting against it and five others abstaining. One of the most upsetting aspects of the case was that minister of justice Hanegbi misrepresented the reaction of the president of the supreme court to the proposal. During the cabinet meeting Hanegbi

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reported that he had informed chief justice Aharon Barak and the outgoing attorney general Ben-Meir of his intention to recommend Bar-On and that they supported the appointment. The appointment caused an uproar. Bar-On was not considered a major figure in the relatively small and tight-knit world of Israeli jurisprudence; what is more, he was an active Likud supporter and a member of the party’s Center, one of its decision-making bodies. Petitions were made to the high court of justice to have the prime minister and the justice minister explain why they had proposed Bar-On and to have the appointment suspended until the hearing. After intense negotiations between the court and the prosecution, the decision was made that Bar-On would not take on his new job immediately. Bar-On resigned without ever having actually served as the attorney general although the cabinet had approved his appointment. Bar-On offered the politicians his resignation if they wanted it and they accepted. On the evening news program of Channel One 22 January Ayala Hason reported the following scoop: the people behind the appointment of Bar-On were David Appel, a wealthy contractor and a supporter of the Likud, and Knesset member Arye Deri of Shas, the ultra-Orthodox party. Deri was on trial for misuse of public funds, but the ten Shas votes were crucial to prime minister Netanyahu and his coalition. Deri had the motivation and the ability to influence who would be the next attorney general. Deri went so far as to threaten that he and his party would not support the government’s agreement with the Palestinians to withdraw from Hebron if Bar-On were not appointed attorney general. Netanyahu and Hanegbi had been considering Avi-Yitzhak, Deri’s chief legal counsel, for the position. That would not do for Deri since he would lose an attorney familiar with his case, and in the event of a plea-bargain, or a later request for pardon, his former lawyer would have to rescue himself from deliberations. According to newspaper reports, Deri met with Netanyahu and Yvette Liberman, the director-general of the office of the prime minister, and made the threat. Evidently, Hanegbi was not aware of the pressure at this stage. Likud party sources later confirmed that it was Deri who first suggested Bar-On’s name, and that it did not come from Hanegbi. The prime minister called for a speedy and comprehensive police investigation into the matter, claiming to be shocked at the allegations


that criminal deeds had been committed. Minister of commerce and industry Natan Sharansky was quoted as saying that the government would have no moral basis to continue in office if even ten percent of the allegations against it were substantiated. The police investigation lasted eleven weeks and fifty witnesses were interrogated. Among them was prime minister Netanyahu; it was the first time in Israeli history that a serving prime minister had been interrogated by the police ‘under warning,’ meaning that he was suspected of performing criminal acts, and his testimony might be used against him at a later time. According to newspaper reports, Netanyahu told the police about a series of candidates for the job of attorney general. He admitted that he had not known Bar-On personally and that he had relied on the recommendations of others. Moreover, Netanyahu admitted that he knew that there were better lawyers than Bar-On but that he was very interested in appointing someone close to his political point of view. Netanyahu had his eye on Avi-Yitzhak but was notified that he was about to be investigated by the state prosecutor’s office and hence would not be able to serve; it was then that he returned to the idea of appointing Bar-On. The police report to attorney general Rubinstein recommended indicting Knesset member Deri of blackmail while using threats, and indicting minister of justice Hanegbi, and director-general of the office of the prime minister Liberman on charges of deceit and of disregarding their oaths of office. The police further recommended continuing the investigation of prime minister Netanyahu based on similar charges but recommended closing the investigations against Roni Bar-On and David Appel. The state prosecutor’s report concluded that the appointment of Bar-On was the result of a sordid forbidden association between Deri, Appel, and Bar-On. Deri and Appel were under criminal indictments. Deri used his considerable political power as head of a ten-member Knesset delegation which was key to the survival of the coalition in order to further Bar-On’s candidacy to head the office that would play an important role in determining Deri’s personal future. In September 2000, former prime minister Netanyahu won a chance for a political comeback when the attorney general decided against prosecuting him on corruption charges. The police had investigated Netanyahu and his wife for conspiring with a contractor in a kickback scheme, illegally keeping gifts given them while in

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office, and obstructing justice. The police recommended prosecution, as did the state’s attorney. However, attorney general Rubinstein decided not to prosecute due to ‘difficulties with the evidence’ (Haaretz, 27 September 2000). The attorney general’s extensive involvement in governance is also manifested in the counsel given to elected officials in cases not necessarily related to the law. An obvious example is the recommendation to ministers during government transition. By law, the outgoing prime minister continues to serve after the elections as long as the newly elected prime minister has not formed a government that has won the confidence of the Knesset. Legally the outgoing government is considered the government for all intents and purposes, and it possesses the full range of political authority. Yet, the attorney general advises the outgoing ministers not to make any political appointments or unnecessary policy decisions that might restrict the new government. This practice is not based on law, but is a generally accepted norm during government transitions. The attorney general is also involved in civil service appointments. Thus, during the transition period between the Netanyahu and Barak administrations in 1999, attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein instructed the legal advisers in government ministries to examine the appointments made or authorized by the government but not yet examined by appointment committees. There are three such committees: the appointment assessment committee, as defined in Chapter 18b of the Government Companies Act; the appointment committee headed by the civil service commissioner; and the advisory committee for senior public official appointments. These assessments are intended to advise ministers whether candidates are professionally and ethically suitable for their designated positions. The attorney general’s formal authority and influence stem from the general conceptual perspective that in certain types of cases it is best if elected officials do not intervene. Democratic government must constrain elected officials when necessary to preserve the rule of law through nonelected authorities committed primarily to professional values. However, as Jowell (1994, 76) pointed out, ‘The scope of the rule of law is large, but not, however, large enough to serve as a principle upholding a number of other requirements of a democracy.’ As the scope of influence of attorneys general has increased, the demands and concrete proposals for larger institutional


measures of accountability and transparency have also increased (Barzilai and Nachmias, 1998).

The governor of the Bank of Israel The dilemma of institutional power-sharing with the executive in a democracy is also evident in economic policy-making. Since its establishment, the Israeli pattern of state-led growth and economic policy-making has followed a dynamic driven as much by political expediency as by professional economic considerations. Institutionally, the powerful ministry of finance, usually headed by an experienced politician close to the prime minister, has been in charge of fiscal policy. The Bank of Israel, headed by an appointed, professional economist, has been delegated the authority over monetary policy. Historically, the Ministry of Finance, and its dominant budget office in particular, has had exceedingly strong influence over the making of economic and social policy (Dery and Sharon, 1994). More recently, as monetarism has received much greater emphasis in macroeconomic policy-making, primarily due to its success in controlling inflationary pressures, central banks worldwide have gained considerably more influence along with the upgrading of their institutional independence (Cukierman, 1992). In practice, the Bank of Israel has followed this development, although the 1954 law which established the Bank remains intact. Consequently, the governor of the Bank of Israel has become one of the most central and powerful nonelected officials in government. The governor’s decisions directly influence the Israeli economy in terms of the rate of growth, the level of unemployment, the level of imports and exports, currency exchange rates, and, above all, the stability of market prices and the level of inflation that is strongly influenced by decisions on interest rates. Similar to institutional arrangements in most western democracies, the governor can use his discretion in the many areas of the Bank’s jurisdiction. The governor’s formal authority is specified in the Bank of Israel Law of 1954, passed by the Knesset during the Moshe Sharett government. Clause 3 defines the Bank’s role as: The management, organization and supervision of the currency system, as well as supervision of the credit and banking system in

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Israel, in accordance with the economic policy of the government of Israel and the instructions of the Bank of Israel Act. This in order to promote the value of the Israeli currency, using monetary measures, and to reach a high level of production, employment, national income and capital investments in Israel. Clause 9 states that the president, upon the recommendation of the government, is to appoint the governor. To ensure that the governor would maintain independence from the elected politicians, a term of five years was decided upon. The appointment can be renewed once only. Clause 15 provides for the removal of the governor in rare cases, such as major differences on policy between the governor and the government, or if the governor engages in behavior unbefitting the position or is incapable of fulfilling his responsibilities. The formal authority granted the governor by law is supplemented by informal sources of authority. First, the governor is expected to be an eminent professional economist. Second, since the governor is not a political actor, his exercise of discretion is to be matter-of-fact, professional, and neutral, with no political or populist short-term motivation, in contrast to elected officials. Third, as Israel’s representative in international economic organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the governor is a member of an international economic elite. Fourth, as a member of the Israeli and international communities of academic economists his decisions are likely to be congruent with mainstream paradigms. The institutional independence of the Bank of Israel is essential to achieve its missions. It enables the governor to ascertain and project the monetary stability of the economy, and to reach longrange objectives that are likely to conflict with the elected officials’ short-term interests. The inevitable problem of dynamic inconsistency reinforces the emphasis in macroeconomic policy on passing regulations in order to constrain the short-term goals of elected officials that interfere with optimal long-term plans (Kydland and Prescott, 1977). Consequently, there is structural tension and a potential for conflict between the governor and elected officials. In other words, were it not for the institutional independence of the central bank and discretionary power of the governor, monetary policy is likely to favor short-term political rather than long-term economic considerations.


Historically, despite the institutional independence of the central bank, governors have been unsuccessful in influencing (Aharoni, 1991), and at times they have even cooperated with populist elected officials. One striking example was the full cooperation of governor Moshe Mandelbaum during 1982–83 with Finance Minister Yoram Aridor’s populist policies that led to hyperinflation. Since the mid1980s, and to a large extent in response to the economic crisis, governors have become considerably more assertive. Their power stems from four major sources: the ideological, the professional, the blurring of the roles of the governor, and the political. Economic policy is based on ethical assumptions and socioeconomic viewpoints. As in all social sciences, schools of thought in economics are contradictory and promote different socio-economic objectives (Phelps, 1990). Therefore, governors might espouse a particular socio-economic philosophy while elected officials believe in something different. There are many examples of this, none more striking than the one that emerged during the 1992–95 Rabin administration. There was open friction between finance minister Shochat and governor Yaakov Frenkel. Shochat was reappointed finance minister in 1999 by prime minister Barak, shortly before Frenkel’s decision to retire from his appointment for a second term. Governor Frenkel advocated a very restrained monetary policy despite the short-term risks of recession and higher unemployment. Finance minister Shochat, by contrast, pushed for a different approach: immediate expansion of economic activity to be triggered by lowering interest rates, with the emphasis placed on increasing employment, even at the risk of a higher budget deficit. Whereas Frenkel advocated the liberal classic monetarist persuasion, Shochat in consultation with his economic advisors espoused the neoKeynesian approach. The two views were legitimate. However, differences in philosophy led to a ceaseless confrontation between the ministry of finance and its minister and the Bank of Israel and its governor, limiting the government’s capacity to carry out an integrated economic policy. The existence of different macroeconomic approaches enables the governor to maintain an interest rate policy that may contradict the economic policy preferred by the government. Furthermore, opinions also differ as to what methods should be used to meet specific economic objectives. There are also disagreements concerning the

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interpretation of relevant economic information, especially in the realm of forecasts and their implications for policies. A striking example of this occurred during the economic stabilization program of 1985. The governor intervened in setting the exchange rate while the government decided to freeze the rate. Apparently, the governor was motivated by personal umbrage because he was not involved in the formation of the stabilization program. Officially, his stands were presented as based on professional grounds; however, he had no trust in the merits of the stabilization program (Bruno, 1993). Eventually, Prime Minister Peres intervened and persuaded the governor to alter the bank’s management of foreign currency to better suit the government’s goals. The governor’s influence on economic policy-making is also manifested in other, more subtle ways related to his official roles. The governor is the government’s economic advisor and also the sole authority in determining interest rates and regulating foreign currency. In many other democracies, by contrast, it is regarded as inappropriate to have these roles performed by the governor. A board or a monetary council makes decisions collectively on monetary policy, thus enhancing both institutional and personal accountability. The most problematic situations occur when the governor supports setting a particular inflationary target or exchange rate that might be different from those preferred by the government. In these situations, he or she may use his or her formal advisory role, the media, and political connections to influence government decisions. In the bargaining process thus created, the governors can use their authority as economic advisor to make particular proposals to the government; in exchange for accepting their proposals, they may use their authority at the Bank to accommodate a request by the government. This was the case in June 1997. The governor proposed a change in the range of the ‘diagonal band,’ (the formula for adjusting the exchange rate), effecting an increase in the range of the Israeli shekel’s appreciation. This proposal was related to the exchange rate policy, a policy not within the jurisdiction of the Bank. As a result of the government’s decision to accept the governor’s proposal, the interest rate was reduced that same day by 1.2 percent. Although the governor publicly claimed that he did not lobby ministers for his proposal, the fact that he agreed to change the interest rate made his influence felt. Significantly, the governor’s proposal contradicted the


policy advocated by finance minister Dan Meridor. Prime minister Netanyahu supported the governor’s proposal, seizing upon this opportunity to bring about the resignation of the finance minister who had been forced on him by the Likud’s party leadership (Haaretz, 19 June 1997, 1a). The governor’s position is capable of influencing government decisions and, due to the multiplicity of his roles, may become either intentionally or inadvertently involved in partisan and personal conflicts. The governor of the Bank of Israel is also a political actor intent on promoting certain economic objectives. Some governors refrain from becoming actively involved in the political process while others have political ambitions. Most wish to gain professional prestige among their international peers. Various reference groups have influenced governors. These include other governors of central banks in industrialized countries, senior economists involved in international finance and banking, and top officials in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Often these top officials endorse the governors’ policies which in turn strengthen their professional standing and legitimize their policies. The quality of the personal relationships among the governor, the prime minister and the finance minister is a significant factor in policy-making. In some governments, the governor is closer to the finance minister and in others to the prime minister. Arnon Gafni, who was especially close to finance minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz, served as director-general of the ministry. During Rabinowitz’s term, and with his strong endorsement, Gafni was appointed governor. In other governments, the governor was closer to the prime minister. For example, governor Michael Bruno and prime minister Shimon Peres had a close personal relationship before Bruno was appointed to the position. Sometimes the governor develops a relationship with government ministers or the prime minister based on similar philosophies or political ideas. Such a relationship evolved between prime minister Netanyahu and governor Yaakov Frenkel. The governor earned the prime minister’s trust, and Netanyahu even considered appointing Frenkel finance minister, an unprecedented move that would have been detrimental to the credibility of the central bank. As monetary policy has become most consequential in macroeconomic policy-making the governor has become one of the most powerful nonelected officials in government. Notwithstanding personality

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differences among governors, the institutional framework within which they operate makes a big difference. Decision-making is highly centralized, secretive, and lacks accountability.

The state comptroller The formal and informal status of the state comptroller differs from that of the attorney general or the governor of the Bank of Israel. In contrast to the governor or the attorney general, the state comptroller is directly accountable to the Knesset and is regarded as providing a watchdog function for it. The institutional and political importance of this nonelected authority has increased over the years, primarily in reaction to the great expansion of executive governance. The state comptroller is neither policy expert nor an executive authority. However, he or she has a great deal of institutional power and public support that is expressed in governance and politics. At first glance, the state comptroller could be regarded as an institution of the legislative branch. The restraints and sanctions that the state comptroller office can place on government activities can be seen as part of a system of checks and balances. Such a system of accountability exists in other parliamentary democracies in which executive authority functions by virtue of having the confidence of the legislature and is subject to its confidence. In Israel, the Knesset usually does not initiate or formulate public policies. Therefore, the role of the state comptroller cannot be understood as an independent authority in a system of separate institutions. The state comptroller evolved as a hybrid institution. By law, the institution is subject to the Knesset’s authority, but in practice it operates within the boundaries of executive authority. The power of the state comptroller derives from a Basic Law that establishes the institution’s status and discretionary authority. The state comptroller has the authority to oversee and evaluate all government activities. He or she prepares annual and special reports that are transmitted to the reviewed offices, to the Knesset, to the official responsible for implementing the recommendations on behalf of the government, and often to the media. Section 2 of the Basic Law places the obligation of scrutiny on each government authority and on each party the Knesset deems subject to oversight. The section also stipulates that the state comptroller may investigate


questions regarding ‘legality, integrity, proper management, efficiency and economy’ of the parties under review. Section 10 adds even more extensive powers to the state comptroller, who is authorized to investigate ‘any matter that he deems necessary.’ The law specifies that the comptroller has the authority to ‘demand any document needed for the investigation from any party under review at any time.’ If criminal deed is suspected, the state comptroller is to submit the report to the attorney general, who is to inform the comptroller within six months of the measures taken in light of the findings. The State comptroller is also authorized to petition the Knesset state oversight committee to appoint a commission of inquiry, and is obligated to submit an opinion on any matter if a government institution or the Knesset requests. For example, the state comptroller played an important role in establishing the Bejski commission of inquiry regarding the commercial bank share crisis in the 1980s. Since 1971, the state comptroller performs also as ombudsman, reviewing complaints sent directly to the Public Complaints Commission by the public at large regarding the deeds and misdeeds of public authorities. The law grants the state comptroller extensive discretionary authority. Yet the authority of the office derives from other sources as well. First, the state comptroller’s power stems from the same developments in Israeli society that brought extensive power to the attorney general: the strengthening and expansion of the power of the courts in arbitrating public policy conflicts that do not find resolution in the government or the Knesset. Moreover, the state comptroller is actively involved in personal conflicts between central players in the political system. This is due to the upsurge in social polarization, as well as the political changes in the rules of the political game. The comptroller is increasingly asked to examine and give his or her opinion on matters related to the political future of senior government officials. An example of this was state comptroller Miriam BenPorat’s involvement in the exchange of accusations between police commissioner Ya’akov Turner and interior security minister Moshe Shahal. Shahal claimed that Turner had become involved in political negotiations before his discharge from the position. The petition by Turner asking for the state comptroller’s professional opinion of what had transpired between him and Shahal demonstrates the

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considerable influence of such reports and their impact on the reputations of elected and nonelected public officials. Turner, who felt adversely affected by the report, petitioned the supreme court claiming that the state comptroller had deleteriously affected his right to plea and that his reputation was severely damaged. The supreme court unanimously accepted his petition (4914/94). The state comptroller examined the conduct of Ehud Barak during a military accident at the Ze’elim training camp when Barak was chief of staff. This case was investigated while Barak was campaigning for prime minister and the report was released weeks before the elections of 1999. The allegations concerning Barak’s behavior during the affair were a major obstacle in his election bid. Barak himself asked that the investigation be expedited so that suspicions against him could be cleared up (Kristal and Kfir, 1999, 155–9). The state comptroller, unlike the attorney general and the governor of the Bank of Israel, enjoys the ‘power of the weak,’ benefiting from extensive public support in comparison to other government institutions. The state comptroller enjoys broad freedom regarding topics to be investigated and the methods to be used. Although not subject to laws of evidence or legal practice, the state comptroller has adopted the legal rhetoric and semi-legal methods that give him or her the professional validation and prestige needed when involved in legal matters (Shamir, 1994). Another source of power is the publication of the reports of the state comptroller in the mass media. The media has shown great interest in these reports for three main reasons. First, the media consider the reports an important source it can use to criticize the government, which is one of the media’s principal roles. Second, the comptroller’s reports enable the media to report information on topics that are of considerable public interest. Last, the reports are perceived as credible due to the institutional and professional prestige that the comptroller projects. The media provides the comptroller with a great source of power, especially at election time. An instructive example is the report on the Ze’elim Bet affair released in 1999. Had the state comptroller determined that Barak had not functioned properly as chief of staff, this may have been detrimental to his election campaign. In 1992 the state comptroller publicized a particularly critical report on the wrongdoing of government ministers, including reckless spending


and improper management of their ministries, especially the ministry of housing. The report was published about a month and a half before the elections. As a result, government corruption became a central theme in Labor’s campaign against the Likud. Labor used this report in planning its strategic campaign (Doron, 1996), although there is conflicting evidence about whether government corruption was a significant factor in voters’ decisions in the 1992 elections (Shachar and Shamir, 1995; Arian, 1995). The institutional framework provides the state comptroller with extensive discretionary authority regarding the subjects of investigation, enabling him or her to play an important role in shaping the public agenda. Thus in August 1999, a special report was published regarding the preparations of government ministries for the Y2K bug. The comptroller determined that ministries were not properly prepared for the problems anticipated, and the report’s findings were given particular attention in the media. Still, the report’s reverberations can also be attributed to the fact that the public was already preoccupied with this topic. An additional source of power for the state comptroller, as with the attorney general and the governor, stems from the lack of conceptual-theoretical clarity as to the quality of the state comptroller’s work, its standards, and methods. A clear example is the term ‘integrity.’ The comptroller must assess, methodically and professionally, whether ‘integrity’ inheres in the decisions and activities of the various government authorities. But there is no precise definition of integrity in either a cultural or professional sense. In many cases, the comptroller’s subjective ethical outlook influences a particular interpretation and at times a new interpretation is created. In these cases the comptroller shapes new norms subject to his or her discretion and professional experience using the support of the media and the public. A striking political example is Ben-Porat’s decision to publicize the names of campaign contributors, who made contributions exceeding a certain amount, even though the contributions were permitted by law. In this way, the state comptroller brought the issue of campaign funding to the public agenda and helped in shaping a new norm of conduct (Rubinstein, 594 – 607, 680). Similarly, the state comptroller played an active role in addressing the issue of political appointments to senior positions in the public service and in government-owned companies. Following

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the 1987 report, the issue was placed on the public agenda. As a consequence, three government committees were established to examine the credentials of designated appointees, and the attorney general took an active role in overseeing the appointment processes. In sum, the state comptroller has considerable authority to oversee a broad range of subjects and a variety of public organizations. He or she enjoys strong public support and his or her reports receive extensive media coverage. At the same time, the centralized decisionmaking processes of the state comptroller’s office, the lack of clear conceptual and methodological guidelines for oversight activities, and the secretive deliberations within the office have been causes of increasing concern. Nonelected institutions have become an integral component of executive governance in Israel. Their strong influence on public policy and democratic performance is an indication of a transition to greater professionalization, specialization, and centralization characteristic of the rational-bureaucratic paradigm. Furthermore, the more frequent breakdowns of the governing coalitions, as discussed in the next chapter, have created even more opportunities for nonelected officials to influence public policies. At the same time, the concentration of power within nonelected institutions coupled with the lack of institutionalized norms requiring greater measures of transparency and accountability to the public and the Knesset, strongly reinforce the centralization of executive governance and contribute to the feelings of ambivalence toward executive power.

5 Elections, Coalitions, and Governance

The constitutional reform of 1992 targeted the chief executive in the erroneous belief that the proposed reform would remedy the inherent problems of governance related to the electoral tie between those parties associated with the ‘left’ and those affiliated with the ‘right.’ In Israeli usage of that period, the left tended to be more conciliatory regarding the future of the territories taken in the Six Days War of 1967 and toward the Palestinians, and was perceived to support secular, liberal policies that were often opposed by orthodox Jewish groups. The right advocated policies that were more militant and it was more likely to support demands made by religious parties. Religious parties were always prominent in coalition calculations. All governing parties in varying degrees acquiesced to religious legislation and budget appropriations for religious schools and institutions to assure the continued support of the religious parties in their rule. The Basic Law: The Government (1992) incorporated a single component of a more comprehensive political reform that included a new electoral system to the Knesset, and a written constitution. In the wake of the widespread public discontent and considerable parliamentary maneuvering, the only politically acceptable option was to constitutionally strengthen the formal authority of the prime minister at the expense of cabinet ministers and the Knesset, rather than address more fundamental but inevitably controversial components of the proposed reform. Over the years, in spite of their combined size advantage in the Knesset, the two large parties refrained from making electoral revisions that would have adversely affected the 85

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size of small parties. The leaders of the large parties mistrusted one another and anticipated that they would again need the support of the small parties in forming coalitions. In such situations, they could not risk alienating small parties (Reichman et al., 1987; Bechor, 1996; Hermann, 1995; Doron and Kay, 1995). The shift to the direct election of the prime minister shuffled the institutional building blocks of Israeli politics, but did little to change basic governance patterns. The striking feature of Israeli democracy, both before and after the reform, was the coexistence of a highly centralized executive along with a highly fractionalized Knesset. In order to cope as effectively as possible with this reality, prime ministers have had to rely on governing coalitions with a variety of parties. Ironically, as the power of prime ministers has increased, their influence in controlling majorities in the Knesset has declined. This situation is not unique to Israel; it has been observed in other multiparty parliamentary regimes as well (Laver and Shepsle, 1994). Political reform is often a mixture of lofty principles and mundane interests. To be sure, reformers may have high aspirations to resolve long-standing governance stalemates and to make government perform more effectively and accountably. Others may wish to manipulate change in order to increase their own power or the power of their group. Leaders are often cross-pressured by these motives and frequently display aspects of both. In Israel, at the beginning of the 1990s, the initiative to reform the regime gained momentum. The call for electoral reform had a long history (Hermann, 1995), but never before had the widespread dissatisfaction with government accountability and performance coincided with a politically feasible proposal and with indecision on the part of the leadership of the major parties (Alon, 1995). A grassroots movement led by prominent law professors and key politicians attributed the stalemate in governance during the 1980s primarily to coalition politics. Small parties, particularly the religious ones, gained disproportionate influence in the coalition formation process and consequently more political leverage and public resources than their strength in the electorate warranted, thus weakening the influence of prime ministers over the formation of national policies. The Knesset, after considerable political pondering, maneuvering, and delaying tactics, changed the electoral law in 1992 (Nachmias and Sened, 1999). In March 2001 it repealed the reform.

Elections, Coalitions, and Governance 87

The fragmentation of the party system The pattern of a strong executive and a splintered legislature manifested itself as Israel moved through three phases of political change. First, a dominant party system existed between 1948 and 1977 coinciding with the period of nation building, during which the precursors of the Labor party (Mapai, the Alignment) formed all government coalitions. In the second phase, a competitive party system emerged with the victory of the Likud in 1977. From that point on, power shifted between the two largest parties, the Likud and Labor, and between the right and left blocs which they respectively led. Third was the period of the direct election of the prime minister coinciding with an era of sectarian politics and fragmentation. The third phase has witnessed a continuing decline in the power of the parties although the ideological identifications among voters has remained stable (Arian and Shamir, forthcoming). In Israel’s proportional representation system of elections, many lists and parties compete. The record was set in 1999 when 33 different lists ran; in 1996, 20 lists formally competed, although two announced their withdrawal before election day. This increase occurred despite the legislation that increased the minimum needed to win representation in the Knesset from 1 percent to 1.5 percent before the 1992 election. Labor’s uninterrupted reign began with the first general election in 1949 and ended in 1977, after which the Likud and Labor closely competed to win elections (see Table 5.1). The Likud emerged as the largest party in 1977, grew more in 1981, and then began a downward trend. Labor peaked in 1969 and its reemergence in the 1992 election was only relative to the poor showing of the Likud. In the period of dominance the party system was one-sided; the period of competition coincided with the concentration of the vote at first and then the reemergence of smaller parties. By 1981 the race between the Likud and the Labor-Mapam Alignment was very close: between them they won almost 1.5 million of the nearly 2 million votes cast, but only 10 405 votes separated them. Within the Jewish population the Likud was a bigger winner, since Israeli-Arab voters accounted for more than 40 000 of the Alignment total. The Likud continued its steady growth and added more than 100 000 votes to its 1977 total. The Alignment bounced

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Table 5.1 Knesset members (N:120) of the two largest parties, 1949–99 Biggest winner

1. Dominant 1949 1951 1955 1959 1961 1965 1969 1973

party period Mapai: 46 Mapai: 45 Mapai: 40 Mapai: 47 Mapai: 42 Alignmentb: 45 Alignmentd: 56 Alignmentd: 51

2. Competitive party period 1977 Likud:e 43 1981 Likud:e 48 1984 Alignment:d 44 1988 Likud: 40 1992 Labor: 44

Second biggest winner

Total seats

Competitiveness ratioa

Mapam: 19 Liberal: 20 Herut: 15 Herut: 17 Herut: 17 Liberal: 17 Gahal:c 26 Gahal:c 26 Likud:e 39

65 65 55 64 59

0.41 0.44 0.38 0.36 0.40

71 82 90

0.58 0.46 0.76

Alignment:d 32 75 Alignment:d 47 95 Likud:e 41 85 Labor: 39 79 Likud: 32 72

0.74 0.98 0.93 0.98 0.73

3. The direct election of the prime minister period 1996 Labor: 34 Likud:f 32 1999 Labor:g 26 Likud: 19 PM 1996 PM 1999 PM 2001

Netanyahu 50.5% Netanyahu 43.9% Sharon 62.4%

Peres 49.5% Barak 56.1% Barak 37.6%

66 45

0.94 0.73

100% 100% 100%

0.98 0.78 0.60

a

Competitiveness ratio: second biggest winner/biggest winner. Mapai and Ahdut Haavoda. Herut and Liberals. d Labor and Mapam. e Herut, Liberals, and others. f Likud-Gesher-Tzomet. g One Israel. b c

back from its 1977 trauma and grew by 50 percent. But comparing the results of the elections between 1984 and 1996 to Labor’s more glorious past leads to the inevitable conclusion that despite the good 1981 showing, it remained a party in decline. The total number of voters increased between 1969 and 1988 by almost 900 000. The difference between the Labor vote of 1988 (685 363) and the Alignment vote of 1969 (632 035) was only slightly more than 50 000 votes. (In 1988, Mapam ran alone and won 56 345 votes.)


The Likud, on the other hand, added more than 370 000 votes, growing from 338 948 in 1969 to 709 305 in 1988. The 1992 election brought Labor back to power and allowed Prime Minister Rabin to reach an accord of mutual recognition with the PLO in Oslo. This was made possible because of the decline in the Likud vote and not because Labor had reinvigorated itself. Labor won 44 seats in the Knesset vote, the same as it had in 1984. In 1996, Labor won more Knesset seats than the Likud, but Shimon Peres, its candidate for prime minister, lost his race against the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Competitiveness remained high, but the combined size of the two parties was as low as it had been in the early years of statehood. The drop to 34 seats and 32 seats, respectively, in the 1996 election was a harsh blow to both Labor and the Likud. The Likud had 32 seats in 1992 also, except that in 1996 Gesher and Tzomet were partners in a joint electoral list with the Likud. Levy’s Gesher had been part of the Likud until 1995, but Raful’s Tzomet had independently won eight seats in the 1992 elections. Labor won 818 570 votes to the Likud-Gesher-Tzomet’s 767 178 votes. In the 1996 elections for prime minister, the division between Netanyahu and Peres closely followed the Likud–Labor split in 1981. With almost 3 million votes cast, Netanyahu won 1 501 023 votes and Peres 1 471 566. While the votes of the Likud-GesherTzomet alliance was only 51.1 percent of those that Netanyahu won, Labor won only 54.5 percent of the Peres total vote. In 1999, the combined size of the two parties was even smaller; their strength was equaled or surpassed by one party’s vote in 7 of the 10 elections between 1949 and 1981. In the 1999 vote, One Israel (a list made up of Labor, Gesher, and the moderate-orthodox left-of-center Meimad) won only 26 seats, with 670 484 votes (20.3 percent). The Likud dropped to 19 seats, reflecting the 468 103 voters (14.1 percent) that supported it. Netanyahu’s 1999 total (1 402 474; 43.9 percent) was almost 100 000 votes less than it was in 1996. Based on the 1996 vote total, the percentage change for Netanyahu between 1996 and 1999 was 13.2. Barak won 1 791 020 votes (56.1 percent), over three hundred thousand votes more than Peres won in 1996. Labor’s size was 37 percent of Barak’s; the Likud’s was a third of Netanyahu’s. Sharon’s victory over Barak in 2001 was enormous. Sharon won 62.4 percent of the vote. But in actual votes, Sharon, with 1 698 077 votes, did little better than Netanyahu had

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done in 1996. And Barak, with 1 023 944 votes, lost almost half of his 1999 total. The Likud was the biggest party winner in the 1977, 1981, and 1988 elections, and Labor in 1984, 1992, 1996, and 1999. Prior to the electoral reform, the choice of the prime minister was determined by the results of the Knesset election. In 1984, although Labor won more votes than the Likud, neither party could form a relatively stable coalition. Consequently a national unity government was formed with the office of prime minister rotating between Labor’s Shimon Peres and the Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir. Religious parties did especially well in the electoral stalemate between left and right in the second and third periods (Table 5.1). The two major policy breakthroughs (the Likud’s 1978 peace with Egypt and Labor’s 1993 accord with the PLO) came a year after the election in which the gap between the two parties increased. The party in government that made the breakthrough was the big winner in the elections previous to the change in policy, but winner only in a relative sense. The parties were able to shift policy not because they were relatively strong, but because the second party was relatively weak. The three phases of the Israeli party system are clearly evident in measures of fragmentation. Rae’s (1967, 47–58) fractionalization index, F, is calculated by taking the percentage of each party, squaring the percentage, adding the results, and subtracting the total from 1: F:19 p2i where ⌺p2i stands for the sum of the squared fractional seat share of the ith party. The index’s values for the 1949 to 1999 period are presented in Figure 5.1. These values range from zero to 1.00; if there is only one party, the index would be 0; if all the parties are extremely small, the index approximates 1.00. Another revealing measure of change regarding the party system is Laakso and Taagepera’s (1979) measure of the effective number of parties (see also Hirschman, 1945; Taagepera and Shugart, 1989). This index is calculated by taking the percentage of each party, squaring the percentage, summing the results, and dividing the total into 1: 1 N:ᎏᎏp2i ⌺


1

0.8

0.6 1949 1951 1955 1959 1961 1965 1969 1974 1977 1981 1984 1988 1992 1996 1999

Figure 5.1 Rae’s Fractionalization Index: 1949–99.

where ⌺p2i stands for the sum of the squared fractional seat share of the ith party. The range of the effective number of parties for the 1949 to 1999 period is presented in Figure 5.2. This value indicates the number of hypothetical equal sized parties that would have the same effect on the fractionalization of the party system. Where the sizes of the parties are unequal, the index yields a compound fraction consisting of an integer and a decimal. The integer represents the number of parties, while the decimal indicates that there is further fractionalization of the system, and a quantifiable distance from an additional effective party. In nearly all elections, N is within < 1.0 of the number of parties having more than 10 percent of the vote, but it is much more sensitive to small changes because it can assume fractional values. Israel’s party system has been highly fragmented with 14 to 33 parties contesting the elections and 10 to 15 actually being elected to the Knesset. In 1949 there was a relatively high level of fractionalization (0.79) and there were almost five effective parties (each represented by at least ten percent of the vote). As fractionalization and the number of effective parties have increased, the task of forming stable governing coalitions has become considerably more complex,

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10 No. effective parties 8

6

4

2

0 1949 1951 1955 1959 1961 1965 1969 1974 1977 1981 1984 1988 1992 1996 1999

Figure 5.2 Number of effective parties, 1949–99.

culminating in electoral reform. However, a major unintended consequence of the reform has been the sharp decline of the two large parties. Thus, although the directly elected prime minister ceased to need a large party for his or her election, its absence has been keenly felt in forming coalitions. Until 1977, the Knesset’s fragmentation did not present a serious obstacle to executive governance primarily because of Labor’s dominance. Often governing coalitions included more parties than the necessary minimum for securing stable majorities in the Knesset. This strategic move strengthened Labor’s dominance at relatively low coalition payoff cost (Nachmias, 1974). The first notable change in this pattern took place in 1967. A national unity government consisting of the major political parties, including the formerly excluded right-wing Herut, joined the governing Labor-led coalition on the eve of the 1967 war. In the next 1969 elections, the parties increased their strength bringing a drop in the total number of effective parties, thus adding to the party system concentration. The increased concentration from this period onward reflected the transition of the dominant party system to a competitive one. By 1977, with the Likud’s victory, fractionalization increased to 0.77 and the number of effective parties rose. After two consecutive


Likud victories, the transition to a competitive party system culminated in the electoral stalemate of 1981. This stalemate was reflected by both decreased fractionalization (two equal sized parties) and the lowest number of effective parties during the 1949–99 period (3.13). National unity governments commanding more than two-thirds of Knesset seats were formed following the 1984 and 1988 elections and persisted until 1990. When Labor left the governing coalition in 1990, Shamir’s government was strengthened by the addition of small right-wing parties, lasting until the elections of 1992. Following the 1992 elections, Labor formed the governing coalition. In this election the minimum threshold was raised to 1.5 percent, a change that affected the total number of parties in the Knesset, but not the number of effective parties (4.39). In the 1996 elections, the first direct election of the prime minister, concentration dropped to 0.18 and the number of effective parties increased to 5.61. In 1999, the number of effective parties rose to 8.68.

Coalitions Although the party system has been fragmented since the first Knesset, the governing coalitions were quite stable during Labor’s dominance. Until 1977 Labor occupied a central position in the party system forming and heading every government between 1949 and 1977, and pursuing its policies with little interference from either its coalition partners or from the opposition. The Knesset fragmentation did not really matter much as long as junior coalition partners could be compensated with secondary ministerial portfolios and relatively limited budget allocations. However, when Labor lost its dominant position, fragmentation became more problematic because smaller parties increased their demands for payoffs making consensual policies much more difficult to form. At the same time, smaller parties became increasingly aware of their crucial leverage in making or breaking coalitions. Since 1977 the bargaining over portfolio allocations and budget shares has become more demanding and complex. The junior coalition partners have demanded a larger share of ministerial and budget payoffs in return for their support, as well as control over high-spending ministries. Consequently, the coalition-forming parties increased the total number of ministries and allocated more

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senior ministerial portfolios and larger shares of the budget to the smaller parties. The number of portfolios increased in parallel to the decrease in the size of the prime minister’s party. In response to mounting public criticism regarding the additions and escalating cost of government ministries, their number was fixed at 18 at most in the same reform that legislated the direct election of the prime minister. However, this limit was removed in 1999. Prime minister Barak capitalized on his landslide victory to expand his governing coalition and solidify his power in office, and Sharon’s 2001 government has 26 ministers. Election outcomes constitute the basis of coalition formation. The building blocks which the coalition-forming parties had to grapple with are presented in Table 5.2. Generally, cabinets commanded more than a minimum winning size coalition, and most ministers were members of the prime minister’s party. The one exception was the minority government headed by Peres following the assassination of Rabin in 1995. In the mid-1980s, the formation of national unity governments altered this long-established pattern. As a consequence of the political reform, the electoral strength of the prime ministers’ parties has considerably declined, and the prime minister and his or her trusted inner circle have replaced the leadership of the coalition-forming party throughout the coalition negotiation processes. The increasingly fragmented party system has weakened the institutional power of the Knesset and accelerated the concentration of prime ministerial power, but at the same time it has considerably impaired the capabilities of governments to govern effectively and accountably. Governance may be impaired in terms of the management of societal cleavages, the setting of national priorities among conflicting demands, the effective and efficient targeting of resources, the coordination of conflicting objectives into relatively coherent policies, the imposition of losses on powerful groups, the effective implementation of policies, and the making and upholding of international commitments in the areas of national defense and trade (Weaver and Rockman, 1993). In crisis situations the imbalance between a highly fragmented Knesset and high concentration of power in the hands of the prime minister may prove disastrous. There are three distinct reasons to expect that the political reform would not succeed in the major purposes for which it was legislated.

Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Sharett Sharett Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion Eshkol Eshkol Eshkol Meir Meir Meir Rabin Begin Begin Shamir Peres Shamir Shamir Shamir Rabin Peres Netanyahu Barak Barak Sharon

Prime Minister

3/49–10/50 10/50 –2/51 10/51–12/52 12/52–12/53 1/54 –6/55 6/55–7/55 11/55–12/57 1/58–7/59 12/59–1/61 11/61–6/63 6/63–12/64 12/64 –11/65 1/66–2/69 3/69–10/69 12/69–12/73 3/74 – 4/74 6/74 –12/76 6/77–6/81 8/81–9/83 10/83–7/84 9/84 –10/86 10/86–11/88 12/88–3/90 6/90 –6/92 7/92–11/95 11/95–5/96 6/96–5/99 7/99–8/99 8/99–3/01 3/01

Term

73 73 65 87 87 64 80 64 86 68 68 68 75 107 102 68 61 62 61 64 97 96 95 62 62 58 66 75 75 73

Initial size of coalition of 120 Knesset members

Table 5.2 Parties and coalitions, 1949–2001

46 46 45 45 45 40 40 40 47 42 42 42 45 56 56 51 51 45 46 46 40 40 40 40 44 44 32 27 27 19

Size of largest party 12 13 13 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 15 16 18 22 24 22 19 17 18 18 25 25 26 19 17 20 18 18 23 26

Number of ministers 7 8 9 9 9 11 9 11 9 11 10 11 12 14 14 17 16 9 15 15 9 10 11 9 13 15 9 8 10 8

Number from PM’s party 58.3 61.5 69.2 56.3 56.3 68.8 56.3 68.8 56.3 68.8 66.7 68.8 66.7 63.6 58.3 77.3 84.2 69.2 83.3 83.3 36.0 40.0 42.3 47.4 76.4 75.0 50.0 44.4 43.5 30.8

% of ministers from PM’s party


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The first is that the new electoral law enables small parties to pressure the bigger parties to accommodate their policy preferences in multiple points of time. They can do this before the first round of elections, before the second round, during the bargaining process for the formation of the coalition government, and then whenever a crucial policy decision is about to be made. Under the old system, the small parties could pressure the big ones only during the coalition formation phase, and then only if they were genuinely pivotal. Under the new rule, the small parties in general and the religious parties in particular are virtually guaranteed pivotal status in the second election round. If a second round is not called for, small parties would become pivotal in the first round. This institutional change increased considerably the likelihood of small parties, in particular the religious, to become genuinely pivotal, thus augmenting their bargaining power. The second reason to expect the new would not succeed in the purpose for which it was intended was the widely anticipated outcome that big parties were bound to lose Knesset seats to small parties. The new electoral law eliminated the incentive to vote for the biggest party in the bloc. If in the past certain voters would forgo voting for smaller parties to increase the probability that the leader of a large party would be the likely prime minister due to the size of his party, now the situation has changed. Under the reform, voters cast a ballot for the candidate they prefer as prime minister and vote sincerely for the party of their choice. Inevitably, this leads to increased parliamentary fragmentation. This added fragmentation has intensified the problems of governance inherent in coalition arrangements. As Schofield (1995) demonstrates, a necessary condition for a non-empty core in two-dimensional policy spaces, like the Israeli one, is that one central, dominant party has a considerable advantage in size and occupies a central position in parliament. The diminished electoral size of the big parties, resulting from the change in the electoral law, and the inevitable increase in the power of small and medium-size parties, virtually eliminates the possibility of a stable core in the Knesset’s policy space. Sened (1996) has shown that a dominant, core party can reduce considerably officerelated side-payments. The advantage that the core, dominant party has in the coalition formation process empowers it to pursue relatively consistent, long-term policies and reward coalition partners


with secondary portfolios in order to obtain their support of the government and its policies. In this way, government capabilities increase. The low likelihood of the crystallization of a dominant party under the new electoral law considerably impairs the ability of the government to maintain consistent policies. Concurrently, it raises the price that the party forming the coalition has to pay to secure the support of its partners in government. Small parties gained a significantly higher share of the government portfolios when the Knesset was characterized by an empty core between 1977 and 1992 than the share of portfolios they obtained when the core in the Knesset was non-empty between 1951 and 1977 and again between 1992 and 1996 (Nachmias and Sened, 1999). The loss of Knesset seats by the two bloc leaders to smaller parties reduced the share of portfolios held by the party that formed the coalition. The coalition-forming party must obtain the support of a minimum of 61 Knesset members in order to present the coalition for the vote of investiture, a central institution in multi-party parliamentary systems and an indispensable proviso for a coalition to become a formal government. The bargaining unit in multi-party parliamentary systems is the party. Each party joining the coalition presents at the coalition formation process its policy demands as well as its office-related preferences. Given that the government can pursue only one policy position, the coalition-forming party must compensate coalition partners with portfolios and budgets in exchange for compromises they make in their policy preferences. This implies that the number of coalition partners should be positively correlated with the cost of the coalition formation in terms of the portfolios and budgets that the coalition-forming party must give away to its partners. The reduced number of Knesset seats that potential coalition-forming parties are expected to have due to the new law necessitates an increase in the number of coalition partners in order to form a minimum winning coalition and pass the vote of investiture in the Knesset. Thus the reform raised the fragmentation of the governing coalitions as well as the number of portfolios to be allocated by those who formed the coalition to their partners. The third reason to expect the reform to defeat its purpose is the remarkable erosion it introduced in the force of the parliamentary institution of the vote of no confidence. The institutional significance of the vote of no confidence as a parliamentary practice has been

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well explained by Huber (1996, 279): ‘By allowing the prime minister to make the final policy proposal, confidence vote procedures give the prime minister substantial influence over final outcomes, even when these procedures are not invoked.’ In other words, by invoking the vote of no confidence, the prime minister should be able to discipline coalition partners to vote with the government even if they disapprove of a particular policy in question. Under the new law, however, that power has been taken from the prime minister since the government can lose votes of no confidence with no immediate political consequence. Knesset members lack the incentive to prevent the passage of a vote of no confidence since only a majority of 61 can force early elections of both the prime minister and the Knesset. The prime minister has lost an important governing resource. Furthermore, the vote of no confidence ceased being a credible threat that excessive budget and policy demands by small coalition partners may lead to the downfall of the governing coalition. This, in turn, leads smaller parties to escalate their demands for policy-related payoffs from coalition-forming parties. As predicted, the 1996 and 1999 election results show more fragmentation and the lack of a central core party. In comparison to the 10 parties of 1992 and 13 of 1996, the 1999 Knesset had 19 parties. Labor, the core party, formed the 1992 coalition government and led a minority government between 1993 and 1996 with either one or two partners. No religious party was included in this governing coalition. But Labor lost 10 Knesset seats in 1996 and 11 more in 1999. It was reduced to about half of its 1992 electoral size. The Likud managed to retain its parliamentary strength in 1996 (32 seats) through tactical pre-election alliances with Gesher and Tzomet. When these two parties left the alliance afterward, the Likud dropped to 22 seats. Gesher left the coalition and later merged with Labor in the One Israel list and again left the government in 2000. Tzomet remained in the Netanyahu coalition and merged with Likud again on the eve of the 1999 election. At that time the Likud–Tzomet alliance had 27 seats in parliament, only to be reduced to 19 seats in 1999 with a loss of 8 seats. If we compare the Likud with Tzomet in 1992 and 1999, the Likud was reduced to about half of its previous size. Shas, the ultra-orthodox Sepharadic party, was certainly the big winner climbing from 6 seats in the 1992 elections to 10 in 1996 and to 17 in 1999, thus becoming the


third largest party with substantial political leverage over the making or breaking of governments. Higher fractionalization increases the likelihood of an empty core in the Knesset. Consequently it increases the power of small parties to extract disproportionate shares of public resources for the relatively small minorities they represent at the expense of bigger parties that represent larger and more heterogeneous segments of the Israeli population (Nachmias and Sened, 1999, 286). The data to test this proposition are provided by the governments headed by Netanyahu and Barak. Although the control of government shifted from the Likud to Labor, the pattern in both governments is similar, providing more evidence for testing the consequences of the institutional change. The combination of a parliament without a large party and high levels of fractionalization generates the excess in the bargaining power of small parties. The distribution of the national budget among government ministries when used over an extended period of time is a reliable proxy measure for the bargaining power of small parties. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 illustrate the share of the national budget obtained per Knesset member for partners of the governing coalitions from 1951 through 1999. To compute this measure, the number of portfolios allocated to members of the coalition were

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1951

1967 Small

1980

1992 1999 Large

Figure 5.3 Budget-weighted portfolio distribution, 1951–99: large vs. small parties (not including defense budget).


3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0 1951

1967 Rel. parties

1977

1992 1996 1999 Sec. parties

Figure 5.4 Budget-weighted portfolio distribution, 1951–99: secular vs. religious parties.

weighted by the budget authorized to each respective ministry in the year following the formation of the coalition. Next, the percentage of the sum of the budget-weighted portfolio allocations that each party obtained was calculated and divided by the number of seats it had in the Knesset when the government was formed. Because the defense budget is determined differently, it is not included in the analysis. As Figures 5.3 and 5.4 show, there was a sharp rise in the share of the small parties in general and the religious parties in particular during the period between 1977 and 1992. This increase is primarily due to the absence of a central, dominant party in the Knesset in these years. Moreover, following the 1996 and 1999 elections, we note the sizeable share of budget-weighted portfolios that the small and religious parties gained. Their share is similar to the share


they obtained when the Knesset was characterized by an empty-core between 1977 and 1992. Attempting to overcome the nefarious effects that particularistic interests and parties may have because of their desire to divert scarce societal resources to less productive uses, if not to waste them completely, is a time-honored pursuit (Rossiter, Federalist, no. 10). In a sense, the electoral reform in Israel attempted the same thing. The evidence of the failure of this institutional design is clear and is summarized in Figure 5.5. The figure shows the division of budgetary allocations between parties which form coalitions in Israel and parties which join them as secondary coalition partners. Parties that form the coalition, be it the right or the left, represent central, mainstream segments of society. Smaller parties usually represent more

% 100

80

60

40

20

0 1 1951

1 1960 Partner

1

2 1970

2

3

3 1992

3 1999

Party forming coalition

Figure 5.5 Budget-weighted portfolio distribution, 1951–99: coalition-forming parties vs. coalition partners.


sectorial, particularistic interests. Even before the electoral reform the parties forming the coalition controlled the lion’s share of the budget allocated to the different ministries. Since the reform of 1996, most of the budget has been controlled by the smaller partners of the coalition that represent special interests in society: new immigrant parties, ultra orthodox Sephardi Shas, or Meretz which represents the interests of the secular upper middle class. The data presented in Figures 5.3 to 5.5 clearly reveal these outcomes. Small parties obtained, on average, significantly less than the large parties between 1950 and 1976, and 1992 and 1995, the periods characterized by a non-empty parliamentary core. During these periods, the religious parties also gained less than the non-religious parties, though the difference was statistically insignificant. The findings concerning the payoffs in the years 1977–92, characterized by the lack of a central, dominant party, as well as the post-1996 election, are crystal clear. Between 1977 and 1992 the small parties gained, on average, almost twice as much as the big parties, and in 1996 they gained a larger share than the big parties by a factor of 3.5. The religious parties gained, on average, larger payoffs by a factor of 5 in the 1977–92 period, while in 1996 they received a larger share by a factor of 4. Regarding the redistributive consequence of the new electoral law, the critical test is the comparison of payoffs between the entire period under the old institutional arrangement with those awarded by the prime minister in the coalitions formed under the new law. Clearly under the old law small and large parties obtained similar shares of payoffs. This finding is consistent with the more inclusive comparative analyses of coalition payoffs in western democracies (Browne and Franklin, 1973). The popular belief that small parties always gain more than their fair share of rewards played a crucial role in legitimizing the cause for electoral change despite its empirical falsity. Electoral systems are easier to reform than other political institutions. However, major changes in an existing electoral system must take into account other institutional arrangements and the socialeconomic constraints of the polity. Consideration of the professional literature and the experiences of other democracies with changing electoral laws underscore the remark by Taagepera and Shugart (1989, 220) in their comprehensive study, ‘Many changes in electoral laws have not been worth the effort and the disruption of stability.’


In a few cases the changes led to deadlock and even civil strife. In response to voter dissatisfaction with governmental performance, the Knesset adopted Israel’s new electoral law. Political expediency prevailed over constitutional wisdom in designing the change. In practice, the change accomplished the opposite of what it was intended to improve. Instead of reducing the fragmentation in government and decreasing the bargaining power of small parties thus enhancing stability, effectiveness, and fairness in the distribution of public resources, the new hybrid electoral system only exacerbated the problem. It maintained the bargaining power of the small parties, increased the bargaining power of the religious parties, and made structural stability in the Israeli parliament very unlikely. In the past, the relatively high fragmentation of the Israeli parliament was checked and balanced by structurally stable cores in the Knesset. Israeli politics has lost this balance. The fragmentation of the Israeli parliament has increased so drastically that the absence of a dominant core party raises grave problems of governability and stability for Israeli democracy.

Public opinion’s assessment of the electoral reform Whether electoral reform should take place is a matter of belief, preference, and evaluation. Whether it does take place is a matter of politics. Public support for reform is also conditioned by political preference. There have been tremendous groundswells in favor of electoral reform over the years. Rafi stressed electoral reform as one of its chief planks in 1965. Yigael Yadin was active in the electoral reform movement long before he entered national politics in 1977. Amnon Rubinstein’s Shinui and the Yadin’s Democratic Movement for Change spoke enthusiastically of electoral reform, although most politicians preferred to speak in generalities and avoid details. The evidence of public support for electoral reform was striking. In 1972, 30 percent of sample reported support for a mixed proportional-district system; by 1977 that figure had almost doubled to 59 percent. After the 1988 elections, with the religious parties making enormous demands in order to join a governing coalition, appeals for electoral reform surged again. Many who called for electoral reform really wanted to change the political outcome of


the election. However, they concentrated on changing the electoral system. After the ‘dirty trick’ of 1990, which featured what amounted to competitive bidding by the leaders of the two large parties for the support of a couple of swing votes, support for reform rose. In February 1991, the Knesset reacted to the ‘dirty trick’ by passing legislation that was intended to change basic parliamentary norms. The legislation stipulated that Knesset members who resigned from the party on whose list they were elected, or who voted no-confidence against the decision of the party on whose list they were elected, would be penalized. The offending Knesset member would not be recognized as being a member of any other party grouping, would not be allowed to run in the next elections on a list represented in the current Knesset, would not be allowed to serve as a minister or a deputy minister during the term of the Knesset in which the prohibited act occurred, and would not be entitled to party financing from the public treasury. The other reform to emerge from this messy political period was the direct election of the prime minister. As we have seen, the direct election of the prime minister law did not tamper with the method of electing the Knesset. By changing only the method of election of the prime minister, the politicians could credit themselves for passing a reform that would ameliorate the situation, without changing the rules of the political game by which they had been elected. The reform was rationalized in terms of governmental reform, more to protect the incumbent parliamentarians (the cynics argued) than to enhance government accountability and effectiveness. The opposition Labor party headed by Rabin supported the direct election of the prime minister proposal, mainly out of short-term electoral considerations; the Likud wavered, with prime minister Shamir explicitly and publicly opposing the reform. The vote of a young Likud politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, would prove crucial, ultimately ensuring Knesset approval of the bill for the direct election against the Likud leadership. Public opinion shifted as the new system was used and support for it deteriorated in the five years of its application. In a 1992 survey, before the adoption of the reform, three in four respondents thought the direct election of the prime minister would mean a better system of government (Figure 5.6). In 1996, in a poll conducted


100%

75% Worse No difference

50%

Better 25%

0% 1992

1996

1999

2001

Figure 5.6 Assessing the direct election of the prime minister. Question: ‘Does the direct election of the prime minister make for a better system of government, a worse one, or doesn’t it make any difference?’ Based on representative samples of voters in pre-election surveys (in 1992, Jews only). Sample sizes were 1192 in 1992, 1671 in 1996, 1225 in 1999, and 1417 in 2001. Data were collected by the Israel Elections Study headed by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir.

before the first use of the system, half the respondents thought that the direct election of the prime minister would make for a better system of government, while the other half thought that the new system would be worse or would make no difference. By the time of the bill’s repeal in 2001 support for the reform had fallen to less than one in four respondents. In the five years of its use, three prime ministers were elected and instability had been introduced to a system that had been known for its stability. Not surprisingly, supporters of the winning candidate during each period of questioning tended to favor the direct election of the prime minister more than did voters for the losing candidate. But in general support for the reform decreased in all groups.

6 Prime Ministers and Policy-Making

The political reality of Israel is that of a highly centralized executive along with a highly fractionalized Knesset. Ordinarily policy-making is firmly in the hands of the prime minister. The legislature can attempt to influence the substance of policies primarily through coalition politics but it rarely initiates policies. Israel has turned into an instructive example of a polity in which the electorate is divided and highly polarized, thus making elections virtual lotteries as the two contending political blocs cancel each other out leaving policymaking squarely in the hands of the leadership (Rabinowitz, MacDonald and Listhaug, 1991). Since the 1992 electoral reform increased the fragmentation of the Knesset the question of what price will have to be paid to line up the necessary support for parties became even more pronounced. The Knesset’s power in the policy processes has remained in the vote of confidence it grants or fails to grant the executive, in ratifying when required its decisions, occasionally amending them, and in overseeing the work of ministries. An excellent vantage point for considering this feature of Israeli politics is the transition of power from one party to another, when new opportunities are presented to the leadership, and when actors with different decision-making styles take office. The policy initiatives we consider here are from the post-1977 period, because only then did rotation in government begin. These policy initiatives provide a fascinating variety of crucial cases (George, 1979) for studying prime ministerial power in Israel. The cases, the transitions of power, and the prime ministers we consider are given in Table 6.1.

106

Prime Ministers and Policy-Making 107

Table 6.1 Topics for consideration Year

Transition to

Transition from

Policy initiative

1977 1984

Begin (Likud)

Rabin (Labor)

Peace with Egypt

Peres (Labor)

Shamir (Likud)

Withdrawal from Lebanon Economic stabilization plan

1992

Rabin (Labor)

Shamir (Likud)

The Oslo Accord with the PLO

In each of these cases the policy initiatives changed long-standing commitments of the government and the political parties involved. In the first case, the talks agreed to by Prime Minister Menachem Begin resulted in the peace treaty with Egypt and represented the breaking of decades of enmity between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In the second case, the hyperinflation which Israel experienced in the 1980s was curbed by Prime Minister Shimon Peres, largely as a result of implementing a government program that the labor unions, historically closely associated with his Labor party, were skillfully maneuvered to accept. In the third case, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s support was quintessential for reaching mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The prime ministers we discuss are different, and so are the cases. The cases regarding Begin and Rabin are related to foreign policy and concern peace-making with Egypt and the Palestinians, respectively. The Peres case concerns economic policy-making in which interests and emotions were at work. Yet the case also sheds light on the managerial style of the prime minister and his relations with political party, the coalition, and the public. The major similarity in these cases is the central role of the prime minister. Beyond that, their different styles stand out. Menachem Begin was a leader loyal to those he entrusted with power and let others affect his policies in different times and in different ways, such as Moshe Dayan regarding Egypt and Ariel Sharon regarding Lebanon. As prime minister, Shimon Peres was a manager who preferred consensus and inclusion to conflict and exclusion. He was patient, tireless, and a skillful bargainer. Rabin was more removed from the intricacies of politics, yet he made it quite clear that his support was crucial for any major policy decision to be reached. All the cases remind us how centralized is Israeli politics, with government ministers, the Knesset, political parties, the press, and


the public brought in at the last moment, if at all. It is nonelected officials, or highly trusted advisors, or a hand-chosen politician or two who can influence the prime minister and fashion a resolution to a public problem. In retrospect, the issues appear ripe for resolution. Egypt had good reasons to make peace with Israel; the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) had to cooperate to correct the ills of the economy; the moment was ripe to communicate with the Palestinian leaders in Oslo, especially in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, these events had not occurred in the past. The interaction of the leader and the moment is what makes these cases so fascinating, and it is to them that we now turn.

Peace with Egypt: 1977 The territories taken by Israel in the 1967 war were the issue of contentious political conflicts in the second generation of Israel’s existence. Immediately after the war, the national unity government, which included the Likud’s Menachem Begin and Rafi’s Moshe Dayan, agreed to return the territories in Sinai to Egypt as part of a formal peace treaty. The Egyptian leadership refused, and it would be a decade later and the bloody 1973 Yom Kippur war before Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat and Begin agreed to the same thing: conciliation rather than belligerence and confrontation. In May 1977, when Menachem Begin, head of the Likud, became prime minister, he inherited almost thirty years of bloodshed and intransigence. The ideological basis to the foreign policy of Begin’s party (Herut, which later joined the Liberal party and others to form the Likud) changed over the years depending primarily on the circumstances. Originally it expressed a claim over all of the territory of Palestine held during the period of the British mandate, including the Kingdom of Jordan. Herut refused to recognize the 1949 borders as legitimate, maintaining that this would prevent Israel from effectively defending itself if war broke out. Herut advocated the idea of shlamut haaretz, an undivided Eretz Israel, and after the 1967 war its platform emphasized the importance of establishing Jewish settlements in all the occupied territories. It is rather ironic that it was the right-wing Prime Minister Begin rather than left-of-center leaders who concluded a peace treaty with Egypt. Two decades later, it would be the Likud’s Benjamin


Netanyahu who would be called upon to implement the accords with the PLO that the party so strongly opposed. Begin’s leadership style was centralized and left little room for the opinions of colleagues if they differed from him. He was an astute politician capable of getting his way in his party and in the cabinet. He had formal legal training and was a superb orator, strongly convinced of the power of words. Generally his style was reactive rather than proactive though his reactions were thoughtful and measured. Begin was not inclined to planning and staff work. He studied issues by himself and relied heavily on his few trusted advisors. In 1978, a bout of ill-health slowed him down and impaired his executive ability. In 1977, following eight electoral defeats, the Likud came to power and Begin became prime minister. He appointed Ezer Weizman, the 1967 war hero and the strategist of the Likud’s victory, defense minister, and Moshe Dayan, formerly major-general and the chief of staff, foreign minister. Not having close relations with Weizman, Begin did not include him in his inner circle, leading to Weizman’s resignation in 1980. Weizman claimed that the government was not assertively pursuing the peace treaty with Egypt, and after supporting a no-confidence vote in the Knesset he was expelled from the party. Although Moshe Dayan was elected on the Labor list in 1977, he became one of Begin’s chief advisors (Naor, 1993) and was reelected as head of Telem in 1981. Dayan was an important ally for Begin in the peace process with Egypt. He was involved in many of the initial contacts and secret trips at crucial crossroads of the process. The Likud victory brought Begin to power in Jerusalem as important changes were taking place in Washington and Cairo. Jimmy Carter became president of the United States in 1977 and was anxious to settle the prickly problems of the Middle East by reconvening the Geneva Conference with the PLO. Anwar Sadat faced stiff economic problems in Egypt and was anxious to extricate himself from the endless rounds of military conflict with Israel. He feared that another Geneva meeting would end in deadlock. Through a series of secret contacts between Dayan and Egyptian advisors, Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem, a trip that electrified the world, was arranged. Only Begin and Dayan knew of the preparations. Dayan met with Egyptian emissaries in Morocco a number of times, and with King


Hussein of Jordan. During September and October 1977 convening the Geneva Conference was the salient topic, including the identity of the Palestinians to be present at the meeting. After the Americans and the Soviets issued a joint declaration which contradicted items that the Israelis believed had already been settled between Israel and the Americans, Dayan met with president Jimmy Carter and issued a new joint agreement about the manner in which the Geneva Conference would be convened. The agreement included a clause that stated that the future of the territories would be discussed in working groups that were to include representatives of Jordan, Egypt, and Palestinian Arabs. This was the first time that the Palestinians were recognized as a legitimate actor in future negotiations. Dayan had not cleared this precedent with Begin and informed the Americans that Begin’s cabinet might reject the document because of the Palestine clause. Dayan convinced Begin and the cabinet approved the document. Dayan later wrote: ‘I served in the governments of Ben-Gurion, Eshkol, and Golda Meir. But never had I seen ministers bending so completely to the will of the prime minister as in this instance’ (Dayan, 1976, 173; Naor, 1993). Sadat’s formula for achieving peace with Israel was expressed very clearly in his historic speech to the Knesset in November 1977. The Egyptian president called for Israel to withdraw completely from the Sinai, including the abandonment of its settlements, and to agree to pledges regarding an eventual settlement of the Palestinian issue. These were essentially the terms of the treaty worked out at Camp David in September 1978 and signed as a peace treaty in March 1979. Begin and Sadat met privately during Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and outlined much of the eventual agreement. Begin reported to his cabinet that the meeting occurred, but not the content of the talks (Benziman, 1981, 39– 40). Some two weeks after the visit, on 2 December 1977, Dayan met secretly with Egyptian vice president Tohami in Morocco and made proposals about the redeployment of the Israeli military forces from the Sinai, among other matters. Defense minister Weizman was not informed of these developments. Only at the end of December, during the Begin–Sadat summit in Ismailiya, was Weizman informed of the Egyptian reaction to the proposals about military issues about which he knew nothing (Weizman, 1981, 91).


The proposal of autonomy for the Palestinians was much more far-reaching than the Likud platform or the governing coalition’s principles. Begin made the decision not to bring it to either the cabinet or the Likud party’s central committee. Even the military provisions were kept secret from a special unit in the army’s general staff that had been set up to examine such issues, although Aharon Barak, legal advisor, and foreign minister Moshe Dayan were asked to review the proposals (Haber, Ya’ari and Schiff, 1980, 172–7). The proposal that Begin presented to president Carter was discussed in the Knesset foreign policy and security committee but not in the plenum of the Knesset. The price of the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, with its attendant removal of settlements and loss of oil fields and air bases, was symbolically and economically huge. The Israeli leadership felt they gained three things from this decision, making it a calculated risk worth taking. First, the peace treaty meant removing Egypt, Israel’s largest and best-armed enemy, from the ranks of battle. Second, an intricate system of agreements regarding the Sinai, backed and funded by the Americans, reduced the military anxiety over the withdrawal. Third, the leadership hoped that pressure to withdraw from the territories in the West Bank would be reduced by accommodating the Egyptians. Begin took important decisions on his own, and in this sense he was similar in his decision-making style to Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Those who followed Ben-Gurion (Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin) tended to be more amenable to consultation with close political allies and appointed senior officials. Sharett, Eshkol, and Meir developed these styles in their long political careers, and Rabin during his military career and as ambassador of Israel in Washington. Ben-Gurion and Begin (and later, Barak) were unique in their imperious nature and their self-confidence. But Begin was different from Ben-Gurion in that he sought counsel for his actions before deciding. This is evident in his consultations with Dayan, Aharon Barak, and Sharon. Begin’s political appointments were unconventional as well. Weizman and Dayan were products of the Israel Defense Forces and were not career politicians. Both had served with Begin in the 1967–70 national unity government headed first by Eshkol and then by Meir. Dayan and others (including Shimon Peres, Yitzhak


Navon, and Chaim Herzog) had left Mapai (later to become Labor) with Ben-Gurion in 1965. Weizman had joined the national unity government as a Gahal (later to become Likud) minister in 1969 immediately upon retiring from the army. As the negotiations progressed, Begin’s appreciation of Weizman’s political acumen did not improve, and he relied more heavily on Dayan. For one of the few times in Israeli political history, the power of the foreign minister eclipsed that of the defense minister. The circle of consultation grew smaller as the issues became larger. Begin prepared thoroughly for the Camp David talks, relying primarily on material prepared by a small advisory group headed by Eliyahu Ben-Elisar, a close Begin confidant later to be appointed as Israel’s first ambassador to Egypt. Cabinet ministers were invited to review the policy options prepared by the advisory group; only one minister did so, relying instead on Begin’s judgment. Begin’s intentions were clear from the composition of the negotiating team to Camp David. Begin was the most militant member of the group; Dayan and Weizman were more moderate. Most on the team were top civil servants who were to work closely with Begin. This was in keeping with Begin’s conception of the entire governmental system as working as the prime minister’s staff. Begin thought of army chief of staff Mordechai Gur as his military advisor. Avraham Tamir, a veteran army officer and a man close to Weizman, was a military strategist who served as coordinator of the military committee. Meir Rosen was the legal advisor of the foreign ministry. The most important advisor was Aharon Barak, formerly the attorney general, and later the president of the supreme court, whom Begin highly esteemed. Absent from the group were the veteran right-wing politicians with whom Begin had spent so many years in parliamentary opposition; the one exception was Yichiel Kadishai, a long-time and close personal aide of Begin’s. For political reasons, Begin maintained close contact with Ariel Sharon, minister of agriculture and a vocal hawk. Despite this blatant bypassing of his political colleagues, in the end they supported his proposals in the cabinet with only minor reservations. Begin’s personal qualities of courtliness, loyalty, and prodigious working habits, his penchant for legal arguments, and his unusual ability to absorb reports and to recall details from them, impressed the negotiators on both sides of the table. Begin implicitly trusted


the people with whom he worked and never considered setting up systems of control or oversight. His ministers trusted him, and the cabinet operated during its first months as a tightly-knit team with few leaks from its meetings, enabling Begin to obtain easily the approval on the Camp David accord, including the loss of territorial contiguity to Sharm el-Shiek. During the Camp David negotiations, Begin felt he had to coordinate with Sharon before signing the agreement that called for the demolition of the Jewish settlements in the Sinai, and the withdrawal from the air force bases in the Sinai and from the oil fields. Begin himself resisted these proposals until the very end. Begin acceded only when it appeared that the whole agreement would fail, and then he called up Sharon and persuaded him not to oppose the removal of the settlements in Sinai. In this historic telephone conversation an important political pact was forged between the two, foreshadowing later developments. Begin came to consider Sharon as his politically most valuable minister. By the time of the 1981 elections, both Weizman and Dayan were no longer in the cabinet, and following the elections Sharon was elevated to the position of minister of defense. Begin refrained from appointing Sharon before the elections because of the strong objection of the Liberal party faction in the Likud. The pact between Begin and Sharon would eventually lead to the invasion of Lebanon and to the massacres of Arab Moslem refugees by Christian militias at Sabra and Shatilla. The importance of Begin’s decision to co-opt Sharon is especially instructive considering those with whom Begin made no parallel effort. Thus, Yitzhak Shamir, then speaker of the Knesset and later to become prime minister and caretaker of Begin’s Camp David agreement with Egypt and the United States, abstained on the Knesset vote regarding the treaty. The reason he gave for abstaining was that it was not seemly for the speaker to vote against the government. The man Shamir appointed as foreign minister in 1988, Moshe Arens, voted against the treaty. Yet the treaty was easily approved in the Knesset with 84 members voting for it, including members from the parties of Begin’s coalition and most of the opposition. Begin’s historic decision to give up territories could not have been predicted by his party’s platform or from his political past. More easily foreseen was the empathy that he showed his constituents and


the effectiveness of his appeal for their support. He spoke to the settlers with understanding, not with venom. The Herut party was never consulted about his moves and some leaders split from the party while others voted against Begin’s agreement. Begin signed the first peace treaty with an Arab state thus starting the long process of accommodating the political right with more moderate policies.

Withdrawing from Lebanon and economic stabilization: 1984 Peres attracted the attention of Mapai’s leaders at an early age and soon after the founding of the state in 1948 he was appointed head of the military procurement department in the United States. Later he was appointed director-general of the ministry of defense, and initiated a variety of organizational changes and programs, including the establishment of the arms industries and the procurement of the Dimona nuclear plant from the French government. Peres developed a reputation for outstanding managerial and bargaining skills that were clearly evident during his tenure as prime minister. BenGurion most appreciated his abilities and commended him: ‘If only all government offices were run with as much talent and success as the ministry of defense is under your administration’ (Golan, 1982, 89). Peres was seen as one who could set himself challenges and achieve them in an imaginative, daring way which required arduous work and the creation of close contacts (Yaniv, 1999). Peres’s leadership style combined centralization and coordination. Most cabinet members were not consulted about his policy initiatives and the votes in the cabinet were often determined by the composition of the coalition and by intra-party rivalries. Although highly cognizant of the political labyrinth, Peres could build a thick wall of secrecy around himself and his course of action when necessary. He relied heavily on experts he trusted, often enlisting policy specialists on an informal basis or on having lengthy conversations with them. He tried to co-opt needed influence peddlers in positions of formal and informal authority, conveying to them a sense of being part of the decision-making process. His instinct for political timing was especially keen, and his patience enabled him to mediate among opposing sides often delaying decisions until he felt that the moment was right.


In the 1984 national unity government the coalition agreement called for the rotation of prime ministers. Shimon Peres was to serve for the first 25 months, to be succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir in the following 25 months. Peres was prepared for his term of office with plans to overturn two disastrous situations: the presence of the Israeli army in Lebanon, and the economic crisis. Peres would prove successful on both counts, bringing about an orderly withdrawal of the army from most of Lebanon in 1985, and steering the economy to an impressive recovery. One plan of action, focusing on the government’s first one hundred days in power, was developed by a team of experts led by his protégé and the party spokesman, Yossi Beilin, and the other centered on economic policies for recovery (Ben-Porat, 1996, 66). The economic plan was put forward by Gad Yaacobi and relied heavily on the ideas of the prominent economist, Michael Bruno (Bruno, 1993). Lebanon On 6 June 1982, exactly 15 years after the start of the 1967 war, units of the Israeli army crashed into Lebanon, ‘to push back the PLO to a distance of 40 kilometers to the north,’ Prime Minister Begin assured President Ronald Reagan (Schiff and Ya’ari, 1984; Yaniv, 1987). By 9 June the air force had destroyed the Syrian air defense system and had shot down 25 planes without loss to Israel, and by mid-June the army reached east Beirut, well beyond the promised range. Begin had fallen prey to his practice of giving unconditional support to those working with him, especially defense minister Sharon and chief of staff Rafael Eitan (Naor, 1993, 322). Only on 12 August were certain decisions restricted to the defense minister and shifted to the cabinet, including the authority to activate the air force, the armored corps, and the artillery. The political objectives of removing the PLO from Beirut and replacing Syrian dominance over Lebanon with Israeli influence were much more difficult to achieve. Only at the end of August were the PLO and Syria ready to give up after months of shelling and mediation. As the PLO evacuation of Beirut was in progress in August, the Maronite Bashir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon. In September, he was killed in bombing which brought Israel to occupy west Beirut. Days later, the Maronite allies of Israel massacred hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, at the


refugee camps at Sabra and Shatilla, in accordance with the practice of Lebanon’s civil war, raging since the mid-1970s, of taking vengeance on any population perceived as hostile. After the murder of the most popular Maronite leader, this action could be seen as predictable. Even more consequential for Israel, Sharon and Eitan had allowed the Maronite phalangists to enter the refugee camps to clear out suspected nests of terrorists. The Kahan commission appointed to investigate the events found Sharon and Eitan and two others Israeli officials to be indirectly responsible for the killings. Withdrawal from Lebanon came because of the inconclusive political results, and because of the heavy toll taken by the military operation. By 21 September 1982, Israel had agreed to withdraw from Beirut under American pressure, and an international force of Americans, French, and Italians replaced its army units. This force left Beirut in February 1984 after suffering heavy casualties, including the death of 241 American marines when a suicide bomber drove a semitrailer loaded with dynamite into their barracks on 23 October 1983. Israel suffered a similar calamity the next month when 60 were killed and 43 were wounded, in an explosion of gas canisters at the military government headquarters in Tyre. In September 1983, a year after Sabra and Shatilla, Begin withdrew from politics and the army began withdrawing from central Lebanon. Shamir replaced Begin, setting the stage for the bitter 1984 election with its indecisive outcome. Prime minister Shamir and defense minister Moshe Arens attempted to establish a military ally in the army of south Lebanon, in order to prevent that area from again becoming a base for attacks against Israel. In January 1985, despite strong opposition from Shamir, Sharon, and Arens, the national unity government led by prime minister Peres and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin decided on withdrawal from Lebanon in three stages, leaving a security zone patrolled by south Lebanese and the Israeli armies. Peres insisted that the final decision be made in the full, 25-member cabinet rather than in the cabinet’s security committee made up of ten members equally divided between Labor and the Likud. A decision in the security committee would have likely perpetuated the stand-off that had given rise to the national unity government and would have placed the legitimacy of the withdrawal in question. All the while, Peres


and Rabin worked through a number of stages, exploring diplomatic alternatives and providing cabinet members with extensive briefings by military experts. In the end, most cabinet ministers supported the withdrawal, including some from smaller parties in the coalition, and Likud ministers David Levy and Gideon Pat. The ten-member security committee proved to be an important resource in the Peres arsenal of political tactics. This committee turned into a super-cabinet, and as such, Peres was able to determine where to bring issues for decision. If the issue was divisive between Labor and the Likud, as was the withdrawal from Lebanon, he could steer the decision to the cabinet. Other issues, such as adding settlements to the territories, were best resolved in the security committee because Labor could not get a majority in the full cabinet but could veto the Likud’s initiatives in the security committee. Peres could shift items from one forum to the other, thus controlling the agenda for both groups. His attention to details, his patience, bargaining skills, and his astute use of procedural rules all enhanced his record in that period. The stabilization plan Israel’s economy has always been highly centralized and dependent on import capital. Poor in natural resources but with plentiful social, political, and military agenda items, it fell to the major national institutions to fund and direct the economy. The government has played a major role in the economy since independence, just as the World Zionist Organization and its Jewish Agency, and the Histadrut, did in the pre-state period. One of the major features of the economy was the overlapping spheres of influence with political centers of power, in both cases leading to the leaders of Mapai and the Labor party. When governmental power shifted to the Likud in 1977, centralization was not lessened, but the affinity between the political and economic leadership weakened to a considerable degree. For example, in 1980, finance minister Yigael Horowitz reversed the policy that allowed Histadrut enterprises to take unlinked loans (loans that were not adjusted to increases in inflation) from the labor union’s pension funds. The results of the enormous increase in defense expenditure that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the increase in world oil prices, and the populist economics practiced by the Likud before


and after the 1981 elections, put the Israeli economy in a tailspin. The 1982 war in Lebanon made matters worse. A remarkable chapter of Israel’s political economy was the commercial banks’ share crisis of 1983. Political leaders at times undertake economic risks because they fear that not taking the risks will expose them to even larger political costs. The banks ensured persistent upward demand for their shares by manipulating their price through various schemes, such as having bank subsidiaries place orders for their shares. While illegal, the process was undertaken with the full knowledge of the government, the Knesset, and the Bank of Israel. The manipulations eventuated in an average appreciation of the value of the banks’ shares at a rate of 30 – 40 percent per annum in real terms. After a few years of such activity, the shares of the banks were grossly overvalued, and collapsed abruptly in October 1983. The government came to the rescue of the shareholders by setting a floor for the prices of the shares, agreeing to purchase all the outstanding shares at a predetermined dollar price over a period of six years. The guaranteed prices were above the market value of the shares. Despite the fact that the shares bought by the government constituted almost 100 percent of the banks’ equity, the government obtained almost no voting rights. Later legislation put the voting shares of the banks in the hands of the government as of 1993. In effect, the banking industry was nationalized; political considerations overrode the economic (Razin and Sadka, 1993). While the heads of the major banks were tried and convicted of fraud for manipulating the prices of their shares, neither the political leadership nor the nonelected officials were put on trial or held accountable in any other manner. When Peres became prime minister, he sought to introduce a measure of discipline into the economy primarily by reducing inflation from three-digit to double-digit rates. Between 1980 and the onset of the bank crisis in October 1983 the monthly rate of inflation was 5–7 percent, making a yearly rate of 60 –90 percent. After the bank crisis, the monthly rate rose to 10 –15 percent and the yearly rate to 120 –150 percent. Because of a large devaluation in 1984 of the shekel, Israel’s currency, inflation soared to over 400 percent a year. These rates played havoc with escalator clauses and with taxation policy. In September 1984, soon after the national unity government was established, a special cabinet economic committee of four (Peres and


Yaacobi of Labor, Shamir and Modai of the Likud) was instituted to oversee government expenditures. The politically balanced composition of this committee reflected the power-sharing rotation agreement under which the government operated. After a series of false starts, the labor unions, the employers, and the government agreed to a series of package deals intended to overcome the spiraling fall of the economy. In November 1984, the Peres government was able to initiate a price-freeze period of three months. The representatives of the labor unions agreed to yield a third of the cost-of-living escalator payment, and the trial period was deemed a success. Peres used all of his influence and authority to win over the Histadrut and its leader, Labor’s Israel Kaisar, an attempt that was only partially successful. The Histadrut was a serious stumbling block to his plan. The other hurdle was Yitzhak Rabin, Peres’s rival in the party, who opposed cuts in the defense budget. Peres argued to the Histadrut leaders that curbing inflation was in their best interest because widespread unemployment would be prevented and the welfare of the union members would be enhanced. Although Peres succeeded in the end, the plan terminated various practices that had been extremely beneficial to the Histadrut, such as the automatic indexing of salaries, ultimately weakening that organization, and with it the Labor party. The three important policy actors in the drama were Peres, the Likud’s finance minister Yitzhak Modai, and Kaisar, chairman of the Histadrut. Modai, who suffered from personal and health problems at that time, played a limited role in the action, and Kaisar was ultimately brought into line after Peres delayed the implementation of the plan until after the elections to the Histadrut in May 1985. Labor and the Likud cooperated in fighting the rampant inflation by agreeing to freeze prices, wages, and taxes without causing undue social unrest. The July 1985 economic stabilization plan which followed was put together by a team of economists, some in the top civil service (Emmanuel Sharon for example) and others (Michael Bruno and Eitan Berglas) who volunteered their service. The role of the American government in the plan was crucial. Its experts participated in a joint American-Israeli economic development team that recommended a United States safety net for Israel. The final details of the plan were decided in complete secrecy, outside of the oversight of the cabinet, the Knesset, the party, or the press. The cabinet session that approved the plan was called


immediately after a regular cabinet meeting adjourned in order to avoid as much public fury as possible. The stabilization plan was approved after a 19-hour marathon session, the longest in the history of Israeli cabinets. In 1986 when the rotation of prime ministers occurred, foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir became prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin remained defense minister, and Peres replaced Modai as finance minister. The plan was bold and highly successful. Inflation rates fell from 16 percent a month to 1.5 percent in early 1986. The government deficit dropped from 12–15 percent of gross national product to 2–3 percent, with only a slight increase in unemployment. Interest rates fell from 880 percent and 560 percent for July and August 1985, respectively, to 53 percent for April 1986. The plan, supported by a two-year $1.5 billion aid package from the United States, increased Israel’s credibility for investors. The reduction in oil prices on the world market and the devaluation of the dollar relative to the yen and European currencies during the second half of 1985 were propitiously timed. Peres, more than anyone else, was credited with the success of the economic stabilization plan. Once introduced, he stood firmly behind it and resisted attempts to infringe it, including a one-day general strike organized by the Histadrut. Peres transferred the responsibility of economic policy-making from the finance ministry to the Office of the Prime Minister, and formed a joint economic council in which the employers, the Histadrut, and the government were represented. Six ministers headed by the prime minister represented the cabinet. The Histadrut group was led by Kaisar, and Eli Horowitz, the president of the coordinating office of economic organizations, represented the employers. Peres personally attended meetings of the council and influenced its work and decisions. The national unity government formed an economic cabinet, made up of 14 members and chaired by finance minister Modai with Labor’s Gad Yaacobi as vice-chair. In addition, the office of the prime minister organized specialized task forces to propose feasible policy alternatives on tax reform, the underground economy, long-term planning, unemployment, and occupational retraining programs. Although the national unity government was in constant danger of paralysis from within because of its structure of parity, Peres managed to achieve his major goals by controlling the cabinet’s agenda


and by determining the timing of decisions. As the date for rotation came closer, Likud members of the government became less and less inclined to endanger their chance at power by balking at Peres’s initiatives. By the time the prime ministership rotated Peres’s achievements well exceeded expectations. The country’s largest circulation daily praised Peres for his ‘verbal artistry, with a talent for maneuvering among various oppositions and contradictions, with endless patience and a strong desire to prove his personal credibility’ (BenPorat, 1986). The rate of public support for Peres during his term of office soared to an unprecedented high (Azulai-Katz, 1996, 124), and the government’s achievements under Peres led one observer to write that he was ‘despite altercation, the best prime minister the state of Israel ever had’ (Margalit, 1996, 22).

The Oslo Accords: 1993 One of the most emotional issues in Israeli politics has been the initiative to negotiate directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Since 1986, it was considered a crime for an Israeli citizen knowingly to have contact with a member of a terrorist organization, and because the PLO was so considered it was illegal to have contact with its members. When the United States and Russia convened the 1991 Madrid conference, there was a Palestine contingent in the Jordanian delegation certified not to be PLO. Israel and the United States claimed that the PLO was not part of the negotiation process. However, Palestinian interlocutors frequently consulted PLO leaders from and in Tunis, and the PLO itself reacted to developments as if it were at the table. Yitzhak Rabin had served as prime minister previously, between 1974 and 1977. In 1969 he had been appointed Israel’s ambassador to Washington and was about to enter the Knesset on the Labor list when the Yom Kippur war broke out in 1973. When Golda Meir resigned as prime minister in 1974, Rabin was earmarked for leadership by the Mapai kingmaker, finance minister Pinhas Sapir. Rabin won the nomination after a close vote in the Labor party Center against Shimon Peres, the first time there had been a contested election for the post in the Labor party history. Rabin was the first native-born prime minister and the first to lack a lengthy political career. In 1977 he again beat Peres for the leadership of the


party, this time in the party convention. In April 1977 a violation of foreign currency law by his wife was revealed, and Rabin removed himself from first place on the Labor list, to be placed twentieth. Peres replaced him as party leader. Before the 1992 election, Rabin beat Peres, this time in the party’s primary contest, by a fraction of a percent above the 40 percent needed for victory on the first ballot. Although the elected leader, he lacked the widespread support among party activists enjoyed by his arch-rival, Shimon Peres. Unlike Begin and Peres, Rabin was not a professional politician. He entered politics after pursuing an outstanding military career that culminated in his promotion to major-general and chief of staff. The political skills of backslapping, negotiation, bargaining, compromise, and inclusion did not come to him easily. Rabin was private, and taciturn, not the characteristics associated with a party leader, and was intent on keeping his counsel to himself. The 15 years between his two tenures as prime minister saw Rabin emerge as a leader committed to achieving peace with the neighboring states. Rabin’s cardinal decision to assertively seek a path to the Arab states and the Palestinians was derived from his ambitious determination to end the cycle of war. This determination was based on his strategic assessment that reasonable compromises from a position of military superiority would enhance rather than weaken Israel’s security. Rabin was deeply concerned about the long-term human, social, economic, and moral consequences of continued fighting against an insurgent indigenous Arab population. At the same time, public opinion was shifting in a more conciliatory direction as the Palestinian uprising, the intifada, raged on. Figure 6.1 shows the percentage support between 1987 and 1994 for establishing a Palestinian state and for negotiating with the PLO (Arian, 1995). The percentage supporting conciliatory positions grew over the years for both policies. Moreover, public opinion influenced the change in policy, and in turn it was influenced by the actual policy change. Public opinion shifted before the change in policy but it shot forward after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. In October 1992, a PLO leader, Abu-Mazen suggested through the Egyptians to prime minister Rabin that secret negotiations begin between Israel and the PLO, but Rabin rejected the initiative. Regardless, Israeli historians Ron Pundak and Yair Hirschfield began intensive secret meetings with the PLO leaders Hanan Ashwari and


% 60

Palestinian state PLO negotiations

50 40 30 20 10 0 1987

1988

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

Figure 6.1 Support for a Palestinian state and negotiating with the PLO, 1987–94 ( Jewish samples only).

Fesial Husseini. At the end of November 1992, Ashwari suggested that the two Israelis meet with PLO leader Abu-Alla to examine solely multilateral economic issues. The historians agreed to the meeting but once the meeting convened, they chose instead to focus on bilateral Palestinian–Israel political matters. This session at a hotel in central London was crucial since it began an exchange of ideas that continued in face-to-face secret meetings in Oslo, Norway. Yossi Beilin, serving as deputy minister of the foreign affairs ministry (Peres was the foreign affairs minister), encouraged the two historians to continue with their unofficial, secret, and illegal deliberations even though neither Rabin nor Peres were informed of these talks. Eventually, Beilin succeeded in his efforts to repeal the law that prohibited contacts with PLO members. On 12 February 1993, the Palestinians presented the Israeli historians a document listing the principles of a future agreement. In March 1993, Beilin presented to Peres the draft accords worked out in Oslo. Peres approved the draft after pondering over it for a month and informed the prime minister. Rabin was far from being enthusiastic, yet Peres and Beilin sensed that he would neither endorse nor support the initiative. Significantly, Rabin did not insist on ending the discussions (Beilin, 1997, 93). After five meetings of unofficial representatives, it became clear that officials with more


authority should join the talks. Peres suggested to Rabin that he (Peres) join the group, but Rabin demurred, though agreed that the director-general of the foreign affairs ministry, Uri Savir, participate in the meetings (Savir, 1998, 20). Following his first encounter with the group Savir suggested enlisting an expert in international law and Yoel Singer was recruited. Singer, with considerable experience in international negotiations, had been involved in the intricate negotiations with the Egyptians regarding Palestinian autonomy and the dispute over Taba, a small piece of land near Eilat. Savir’s and Singer’s appointments were to remain secret as were all the other details of the talks. Rabin was well acquainted with Singer and trusted his judgement and discretion. Yoel Singer’s father, Gideon, had fought during the 1948 Independence War in the Palmach unit, Harel, which Rabin commanded. In the 1980s, Yoel was head of the international law branch of the army and during Rabin’s tenure as minister of defense they had ample opportunity to closely interact. In 1985, Rabin awarded Singer with promotion to a rank above that officially authorized for the position. At Singer’s retirement ceremony, Rabin said of him: ‘We will not agree to give him up without a fight. We shall meet again’ (Yediot Aharonot, 27 August, 1993, 8–9). Only a handful of Israelis knew of the negotiations. Among the uninformed were top officials in the office of the prime minister, including legal advisor Elyakim Rubenstein who headed, at that same time, the Israeli negotiating team with the Jordanian Palestinians. Moreover, the principles that Rubenstein was so valiantly defending in his negotiations had already been compromised in the Oslo talks. Even Eitan Haber, the director of Rabin’s bureau, was not included in the loop. Throughout the process, Rabin kept relevant information from the Knesset and even from his cabinet. He was much less than forthcoming with his closest colleagues, to the point that both Haber and Rubenstein considered resigning during this period. In June, Rabin expressed his discomfort to Peres with the draft principles designed by Savir’s team in Oslo, conveying his suspicion that the PLO leadership in Tunis was exploiting the team by using the Oslo talks to trump more moderate Palestinians (Beilin, 1997, 109). Rabin might have abandoned the Oslo initiative were it not for Singer’s endorsement (Beilin, 1997, 111). It was Singer who insisted,


and ultimately prevailed, that Israel and the PLO sign a declaration of mutual recognition as one of the first agreements between them. This coincided with signing the declaration of principles between the two sides. The declarations were initialed on 20 August 1993, nine days before the Israeli cabinet knew anything about it. Once the initiative was unveiled, the cabinet ministers overwhelmingly supported it. In early September Rabin and Arafat exchanged letters through the Norwegian foreign affairs minister. On the White House lawn in Washington on 13 September 1993, Peres and Abu-Alla signed the declaration of principles, and Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands for the first time.

Conclusion There are great similarities in these three cases, and vast differences as well. Each prime minister embarked on a major policy initiative soon after his election; only Peres’s efforts to withdraw from Lebanon and to curb hyperinflation would have been predictable. The three prime ministers kept almost all of their cabinet in the dark, having only one minister in whom they confided: Begin with Dayan, Peres with Modai, and Rabin with Peres. In each case these influential politicians were not long-standing allies, but rather were often at odds with the prime minister in political battles. Top civil servants were generally not included in the consultations. Thus it is striking to note the absence of a crucial role for the chief of staff of the army, the secretary of the government, and the director of the office of the prime minister. The prime ministers made extensive use of personal advisors, Begin and Aharon Barak, Peres and a number of economists, Rabin and Singer. These advisors were able to keep their plans secret. Peres was expert at bringing people of different views and backgrounds together and at involving them in decision-making processes; Rabin much less so. Begin and Rabin, more than Peres, were avid consumers of documents, briefs, and reports. None involved the media in the process before the decision, though they were available to the media in different degrees after the decision was made, with Peres most ready to be interviewed and Rabin least so. Three very different situations, three very different leaders.

7 Transition of Government Power

The peaceful transition of governmental power constitutes the very essence of the democratic regime. Although the constitutional principles, institutional arrangements, and the governance culture that characterize such transitions differ from country to country (Finer et al., 1995), their common objective is to implement the most fundamental right of voters to change the political leadership while maintaining order, stability, and the proper work of government. The transition of government is far from being a simple act of executive succession. It is a complex political-administrative process that constrains the outgoing government and delays the rule of the new government. To a large extent the nature of the transition, the preparations for it, the personnel and organizational decisions made during the transition, and the policies initiated at the outset, all influence the effectiveness of the new government as well as its accountability.

Transitions: phases and regimes Government transition is a political-administrative process centered on the passing of political authority from an outgoing leadership to a newly elected one, according to arrangements prescribed by law and public norms institutionalized over time. In the first phase, prior to the election candidates with a reasonable chance of winning usually make preliminary plans to implement campaign promises if elected. Such pledges constitute a basis for post-election demands, also affecting the relations between the incoming and outgoing 126

Transition of Government Power 127

government. The second phase, government formation, is at the core of the transition process. In this phase, a whole range of activities, including victory addresses, coalition negotiations, consolidation of policy positions, assignment of cabinet ministries, and appointments of political and professional staff, takes place. Formally, this phase ends with the swearing-in of the new government in the Knesset. The outgoing government may make significant decisions in anticipation of a new government. For example, Menachem Begin’s uneasiness at the possibility that Shimon Peres would become prime minister brought him to decide on the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor just before the 1981 elections (Nakdimon, 1993, 209). Two mirror-image problems are present: lacking public support the outgoing government may function in a limited fashion, or to make its policies last it may take rash decisions. The third phase has been termed ‘the first hundred days.’ The period’s actual length is obviously inexact, varying from one transition to another. In this momentous period, public expectations are high, and the new government enjoys a large measure of support. The media scrutiny and criticism is relatively limited. Problems and errors are viewed as inevitable and attributed to inexperience and learning. The electoral victory also tends to make the winning party more cohesive, at least in the short run, facilitating the formation of policies as well as the overall performance of the executive branch. In contrast, the losing party faces low morale, organizational difficulties, and often a leadership crisis. The entire transition process and its phases vary in their level of institutionalization. Compared with parliamentary regimes, the transfer of power in the United States is highly institutionalized and its phases most distinct. The date of the presidential election is set by law and thus introduces a rhythm and predictability to American politics absent in most parliamentary and hybrid regimes. On the afternoon of 3 January, the new members of Congress are assembled and sworn in. The president is inaugurated on 20 January. Only then does the new White House staff, cabinet members, heads of central administrative authorities, and other political appointees take office. Since 1951, based on the initiative of president Harry S Truman who encountered serious difficulties in the transfer of power of his


administration, a tradition of methodical and orderly transition has evolved. In this highly institutionalized tradition, the staffs of the outgoing and incoming administrations are to cooperate in accordance with formal procedures and informal customs. Special teams are appointed to manage these transitions, the heads of which are appointed by the incumbent president and presidential candidates. Presidential candidates appoint team directors well in advance of the elections. The Presidential Transition Act enacted in 1963 earmarks special budgets for the transition teams and requires the allocation of special office space. Since 1964, the staffs of outgoing governments have prepared briefs and information files on national security and foreign affairs topics, including sensitive details on commitments to other governments. Following the election, members of the outgoing government are responsible for delivering pertinent information on the whole range of policies. During the first hundred days the new White House staff prepares the state of the nation address, presents legislative programs, and submits proposals for the federal budget. Compared with the United States, the transition of power in Great Britain is brief and less elaborate. Based on law and time-honored traditions, members of the shadow government are in place before the elections and are expected to develop alternative policies in their areas of jurisdiction. If the opposition party wins the election, its shadow ministers are usually appointed to the same ministerial offices that they represented in the shadow government ( Jennings, 1961, 84 –5). The entire transition period is relatively short. Generally, one party wins a majority of seats in parliament enabling it to form a government with no coalition partners. Prior to the elections, professional civil service employees make preparations for the possibility that the party in opposition will win. These include the rendering of party platforms into workable policy guidelines. When urgent issues are on the public agenda, alternative programs are developed well in advance in accordance with the parties’ platforms so that they could be implemented as soon as the new ministers take office. Such programs have been found most useful by new governments (Wilson, 1976, 42–5). Unlike the United States, political appointments are minimal. New ministers are expected to work with the permanent senior civil servants throughout their terms of office. The top civil servants


assist new ministers in a variety of ways, including the provision of information about the offices, updates on the state of existing programs, and the formation of new policies. In fact, they are expected to provide any relevant information that might assist the new ministers, except personal information about ministers in previous governments (Armstrong, 1989, 141). In parliamentary regimes in which coalition governments are formed, transitions extend over longer periods of time and their phases tend to blur. This, for example, is the case in the Netherlands with a strong political tradition of fair representation of the various sectors of society (Lijphart, 1984). Once the election results are announced, the monarch appoints the leader of the party that won most votes to form a coalition government. During the process of forming the government, the appointed leader decides on the parties that will join the government, the programs the government will pursue, and the allocation of ministerial portfolios. On average, the process lasts some seventy days. During the entire coalition formation period the incumbent government keeps on governing. However, it is not supposed to initiate new policies. It continues with the routine activities, including completing legislation, presenting budgets, and making necessary civil service appointments (Andweg, 1997, 65). The process of coalition formation is accompanied by intensive negotiations concerning the government’s new policies. The outcomes of such negotiations are specified in binding coalition agreements. In the past, general policy guidelines were presented in coalition agreements, leaving ministers with a large measure of discretion within their ministries. Nowadays, a highly detailed policy platform is presented which the government is required to follow throughout its term, along with a list of major objectives that the various ministers are required to pursue (Andweg and Irwin, 1993, 112).

Transitions in Israel: rules and practices Until the 1996 electoral reform the general process of government transition in Israel was similar to that found in other parliamentary, coalition-based governments. The direct election of the prime minister changed some of the institutional arrangements for transitions to better suit the emerging hybrid regime.


Under the old regime, specific rules and practices for transitions were set in a piecemeal fashion. Thus, in 1984 attorney general Yitzhak Zamir issued guidelines that restricted political appointments during the election period. Over the years, attorneys general in coordination with the civil service commission have issued more specific legal guidelines and recommendations regarding political and professional appointments, and the handling of the information gathered in the ministries. With respect to the authority of outgoing governments, article 32 of the old Basic Law: The Government stipulated that the outgoing government continue to fulfill its functions until new prime ministers present their governments to the Knesset and obtain its confidence. The law stipulated that following the official announcement of the election results the president is to assign to one of the Knesset members the task of forming a government. Usually, the president assigned the task to the party leader whose party won the largest number of seats in the Knesset. The appointed party leader would attempt to form a governing coalition based on coalition agreements outlining general policy guidelines, and very specific obligations on the distribution of portfolios and the composition of Knesset committees. The coalition formation process was to take 21 days with a possible extension of 21 days. Once the Knesset expressed its confidence in the new government, the transfer of power was formally completed and the outgoing government lost all authority. Staff were assigned to preserve ministerial materials within the ministries, and file, classify, and deposit them in the national archives. Outgoing ministers were entitled to take with them personal materials they had kept in their offices for reasons of convenience. These instructions were originally based on the Archives Law (1955), and were then adopted as official procedure in 1984. Under the principle of continuity, authoritative and legal actions taken by outgoing governments, such as primary legislation, amendments, professional appointments, and formal agreements, remain intact when new governments assume office. The same practice holds for the activities of prime ministers and cabinet ministers (Attorney General Zamir’s Guideline No. 21.474, 1984). With respect to changing government policies, the supreme court ruled that a policy change resulting from a change of government is legitimate as long as it is made in accordance with the rules of judicious


administration, even if the change may worsen the conditions for some citizens (H.J.C. 4400/92 Kiryat Arba Regional Council et al. v. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin et al.). The 1996 reform changed the rules for forming new governments. The law stipulates that the prime minister-elect or someone authorized by him shall attempt to form a new government within 45 days. Failure to form a government shall lead to new elections for the Knesset and prime minister. With the Knesset’s expression of confidence in the new government, the term of the previous government comes to an end and the new government takes office. The cabinet secretariat and the attorney general’s office issued some guidelines to new governments. During the first days in office the new ministers receive from the secretariat a dossier of regulations pertinent to their ministerial positions and the work of their offices. The secretariat also organizes a training session for the incoming staff on the management of government materials. The civil service commission and attorney general’s office oversee personnel appointments throughout the transition period, occasionally also offering their advice on the legal aspects of coalition agreements.

The first transition: 1977 The 1977 political upheaval brought the Likud to power ending Labor’s uninterrupted rule since the establishment of the state. This was Israel’s first inter-party transition. The reasons for Labor’s defeat included the aftershock of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, charges of corruption within Labor, the formation of the Democratic Movement for Change (DMC) that drew off votes from Labor, and the shift to the Likud by many young Sephardim whose parents had traditionally voted Labor (Arian, 1998). Surprised by its victory after eight electoral defeats, the Likud was not prepared for the transition. It even lacked qualified candidates to appoint for those public positions permitted by law and precedent. In fact, few personnel changes were made throughout the government during the Likud’s first year in office (Nachmias, 1991). Begin promised policy changes during the campaign, including greater aid for settlements in the territories taken in the 1967 war, a greater affinity for tradition and religion, and the liberalization of the economy. Begin also emphasized his will to achieve peace; as


stated in the Likud’s platform and after the elections in the government policy guidelines: ‘The state of Israel under Begin’s leadership would be willing to take part in the Geneva Convention based on the United Nations resolutions 242 and 338.’ Several weeks before the elections, Begin appointed Yosef Rom to head a government transition team whose primary task was to recommend reforms in the organizational structure of the government in order to enhance its effectiveness and efficiency. The team’s recommendations were quite similar to those prepared for Labor by a taskforce headed by Gad Yaacobi. The Likud’s team was more concerned with public relations than with preparing systematic policy proposals. In fact, even the recommendations on government reorganization were not well disseminated. For example, Begin invited Ariel Sharon to serve as agriculture minister in his government unaware of the team’s recommendation to move the politically important public lands authority from the agriculture ministry to the newly proposed ministry of energy and infrastructure (Naor, 1993, 58–9). The Likud’s economic team, headed by Simcha Ehrlich and Yehezkel Flumin (subsequently the minister and deputy minister of finance, respectively), did not carry out thorough pre-election preparations. They spoke to the media on liberalizing the economy, stating that the Likud intended to reduce government subsidies, lower the annual inflation rate to 15 percent by 1979, reduce the national budget by 5 billion Israeli pounds, and privatize state-owned land. They would also invite Nobel laurel Milton Friedman, a staunch advocate of liberal economics, to advise the government (Ha’aretz, 22 May 1977, 1a). To many observers Begin’s victory speech was an indication of the changes to come. Begin, wearing a black skullcap, quoted verses from the Bible and thanked God for the election victory – rhetoric and symbolism unprecedented in the state’s political history. The media around the world, and particularly in the United States, reacted by calling Begin ‘a bloodthirsty terrorist’ and speculating that he would lead the region to military confrontations and even to war (Ha’aretz, 21 and 22 June 1977; Naor, 1993, 35–7). Prime minister Rabin met with Begin before the new government was sworn in, and they held several more meetings afterwards. Rabin gave clear instructions to the outgoing director-general of the


prime minister’s office, Amos Eran, to share with the incoming staff all the available information. In due course, Eran prepared position papers and briefs on a wide variety of subjects and held several meetings with Begin to update him on Rabin’s secret visit to Morocco and the diplomatic contacts with Jordan. In an interview with him, Amos Eran pointed out that the cooperation between Rabin and Begin had been developing since the raid on Entebbe in 1976 when Rabin sought Begin’s counsel on a number of aspects of the operation. However, not all of Labor’s political appointees cooperated in the transition. One of the most notable examples was the director of the public lands authority who declared on television that if the new government replaced him he would resort to ‘a scorched earth policy,’ a statement that aroused anxiety in the incoming government that civil servants would conceal crucial information (Ha’aretz, 27 May 1977, 1). Begin invested a great deal of time in forming his coalition. Demands by the NRP and DMC made the negotiations difficult, and during the coalition discussions Begin, who had suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized before the elections, had another attack. While still in the hospital he conducted coalition negotiations with Moshe Dayan of Labor, while Ehrlich negotiated with the DMC (Urieli and Barzilai, 1982, 238). The coalition agreements were also indicative of the changes to come. Although most of the terms were written in vague language, issues of religion and state were formulated in great detail. Begin committed his government to ‘insist on full compliance with article 179 of the 1936 penal law,’ that prohibits the display or the publication of pornographic images.’ He also committed himself to support a bill stating that the ‘conversion to Judaism must be according to Jewish law and that a rabbinical court will serve as the body authorized to verify conversions performed abroad.’ The coalition agreements also stipulated that the anatomy and pathology law would be amended, thus repealing the provision passed earlier in the year permitting abortions based on social reasons (Ha’aretz, 20 June 1977, 3). On 20 June 1977, two weeks after he was assigned the task of forming a coalition, Begin presented his government to the Knesset and obtained its confidence by a vote of 63 to 53. He announced from the Knesset podium that ‘prevention of war in the Middle East


will be our first concern,’ and called for the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and Syria to meet with him for negotiating peace agreements with no preconditions. In his speech Begin also asserted Israel’s right to exist, the importance of establishing more settlements, and his intention to strengthen relations with the United States and to improve relations with the Soviet Union. He called on Israelis living around the world to ‘come home,’ and emphasized the importance of education for humanistic and Jewish values. Begin briefly presented the outline of the government reorganization plan, and ended his speech with a request for a ‘year of moral credit’ (Ha’aretz, 21 June 1977, 9). On 26 June, 1977, the cabinet held its first meeting, most of it devoted to approving the reorganization plan of the government. Begin also asked the ministers not to leak cabinet information to the media, and to attend Knesset meetings. Dayan proposed that the ministers alternate in their attendance and Begin accepted his proposal. Two days later Begin brought the organizational changes to the Knesset, and they were swiftly approved. From his first day in office Begin devoted most of his attention to foreign affairs and diplomacy, in particular to pursuing a peace treaty with Egypt. Following his visit to the United States, attempts to negotiate with Egypt began through secret channels. Most notable among the diplomatic initiatives was Dayan’s secret meeting in London with Jordan’s King Hussein where the possibility of a territorial compromise in the West Bank was discussed, a position incongruent both with the Likud’s platform and the declared policy of the government. In August 1977, Begin met with Romanian president Nikolae Ceaucescu and delivered somewhat vague messages that Israel would be ready to make significant concessions in Sinai in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt. Ceaucescu passed these messages on to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Other than Dayan, no members of the cabinet participated in these diplomatic exchanges, nor did they know of their existence (Dayan, 1981, 37). It would seem that no greater internal political change could have taken place in Israel. Power shifted from the dominant party whose members occupied influential positions through the executive and the Knesset to the opposition. Whereas Labor espoused a centralized economy and territorial concessions in return for peace agreements, the Likud, a party with no previous experience in government,


advocated a liberalized economic system and a vision of greater Israel. Yet, Begin’s initiatives in the first hundred days in office led to the peace treaty with Egypt. The government transition was plagued by inefficiency, with little preparatory work, no experience in governance and public administration, and no cadre of accomplished professionals willing to serve in the new government. In fact, a systematic evaluation of the government’s economic policies showed results opposite to those promised in the Likud’s platform and pledged by its leaders (BenPorat, 1982, 325–33). The actual reorganization of the government was modest, and overall the changes did not effect the work of the administration. At the same time, the transition was unprecedented. Begin and Rabin respected each other and cooperated in the early phases of the transition. The new government’s expectation that the civil service would stand in its way proved untenable. The cabinet secretariat swiftly adjusted to the new reign, and the guidelines issued by the attorney-general’s office set the framework for the administrative part of the transition. But above all it was Begin’s leadership that inspired the first orderly transfer of power in Israel.

Transitions in the 1980s From Shamir to Peres: 1984 In late August 1983, prime minister Begin announced his intention to retire from politics, and sent his letter of resignation to the president in September. Endorsed by Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, minister of foreign affairs, was elected by the Likud’s center to succeed the prime minister. Due to Begin’s illness no official meetings took place. Shamir obtained updated and secured information from the staff in the prime minister’s office, and he made no meaningful changes in the composition of the government. The incumbency of Shamir’s government was relatively short. By March 1984 the Knesset decided to call for early elections, almost a year and a half before the official end of its term. Labor, headed by Shimon Peres, was doing well in public opinion polls and expected to win (Korn, 1994, 84). In anticipation of electoral victory, Peres prepared himself for office. He appointed a ‘first hundred days’


team, headed by party spokesman Yossi Beilin, to develop specific and detailed policy plans for the government. The plans included policy objectives, implementation strategies, and even assessments of political feasibility. A large measure of mutual trust evolved between Peres and members of the team facilitating the development of a fruitful dialog. Another team, headed by Gad Yaacobi, who was expected to be appointed finance minister, consisted of well respected economists, including Haim Ben-Shahar, Eitan Berglas, Yoram Ben-Porat, Michael Bruno, and Amnon Neubach, formerly a top official in the finance ministry. The team was asked to develop a comprehensive program for overcoming the economic crisis. Its major recommendations were subsequently included in the economic stabilization plan, discussed in the previous chapter. Contrary to election forecasts, Labor did not do as well as expected and the Likud did better. Thus each party could veto a coalition formed by the other. Rather than calling for re-election, the two parties agreed to form a unity government and to rotate prime ministers with Peres serving first. On 13 September 1984, the Knesset granted its confidence to the new government with a vote of 89 to 18. The cabinet’s first meeting was devoted entirely to the economic crisis. Several significant decisions were made, including budget cuts, the devaluation of the Israeli shekel by 19 percent, a 9 percent rise in the price of fuel, and unprecedented restrictions on imports. Unlike the previous transition, this transition was characterized by ill will and quite limited cooperation at all levels, in particular in the prime minister’s office. The outgoing staff did not prepare briefs, updates, and information files for the incoming staff, even deleting from computers non-classified files. It was up to the secretariat to pass on the organizational memory of the outgoing cabinet. The main innovation in this transition was the pre-election preparations. By forming the ‘first hundred days’ team well in advance, Peres could rely on trusted and systematic analyses and recommendations as to the major issues facing the government without losing precious political time. However, the unity government introduced a serious constraint on implementation. Moreover, the upcoming elections in the Histadrut, a key actor in any economic plan, made the swift execution of the team’s economic plan politically risky. Following the Histadrut’s elections, Peres formed an informal team under the leadership of Michael Bruno and the finance ministry


director-general Emmanuel Sharon to develop an economic stabilization program. This program incorporated many of the recommendations advanced by the one hundred days team. With respect to the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the recommendations of Beilin’s team were also influential, partially because of their congruence with the recommendations prepared in the army by a special task force. Several members of the team were appointed to assist Peres in the prime minister’s office. Thus Beilin was appointed cabinet secretary, Amnon Neubach served as economic advisor, and Nimrod Novik was named advisor on foreign affairs. From Peres to Shamir: 1986 The transition between the staffs of the Peres and Shamir administrations took place within the framework of the rotation agreement. Just as Shamir and Peres did not cooperate during their terms of office, neither did their staffs cooperate during the transition. There was no overlap period, and in the words of the incoming directorgeneral of the prime minister’s office, Yossi Ben-Aharon, the Peres staff ‘left scorched earth behind them,’ just as the Shamir staff did in the previous transition. In violation of the regulations of the National Archives, the Peres staff even removed all the information stored in the office’s computers.1 The one notable exception was Avraham Tamir, director-general of the prime minister’s office, who prepared in orderly fashion files of information that the office had dealt with. However, because of his limited involvement with the Peres initiatives, the information was far from being satisfactory for an orderly transition.

Transitions in the 1990s From Shamir to Rabin: 1992 On February 1992, Labor elected Rabin over Peres as the party’s chairman and candidate for prime minister. Prior to the election campaign no systematic policy plans were developed. Programs presented to the public were attempts to win over the media and voters. In the words of Shimon Sheves, the person closest to Rabin during the campaign, ‘the work plans were the campaign, and the campaign was the work plans.’


The 1992 election outcomes enabled Labor and the left bloc in the Knesset to form a coalition for the first time in 15 years without center-to-right parties and with no dependence on ultra-orthodox parties. Even before the official results were announced, Rabin delivered a victory speech that presaged a change in the governing style, a change of government policy toward the peace process, and a change in the roles of the prime minister within his party and the government. Rabin credited himself with Labor’s victory, and declared his intention to lead the negotiation on coalition agreements and to determine the composition of the government. Several ministers of the outgoing government attempted to push their preferred policies during the transition. For example, Ariel Sharon, the outgoing minister of construction and housing, tried in the last cabinet meeting to get approval for his rezoning plans in the Jerusalem region as well as to secure a privileged status for the settlements in the occupied territories. However, Shamir objected, arguing that in general it would be improper to approve controversial policies during the government’s last meeting, and particularly since Sharon’s proposal had been rejected in an earlier meeting. At same time, in its last meeting the outgoing government made several senior professional appointments despite the attorney general’s regulations that prohibit such moves (Ha’aretz, 6 July 1992, 5a). In fact, in the last month of Shamir’s government nominations for appointments to boards of directors in government companies totaled 160 – 20 times the monthly average during the course of that year (Ha’aretz, 30 June 1992, 4a). A notable exception in this transition was the outgoing director-general of the prime minister’s office, Yossi Ben-Aharon, who prepared a lengthy document detailing the crucial issues awaiting Rabin’s attention. Ben-Aharon headed the Israeli delegation to talks with Syria within the framework of the Madrid Conference, and Rabin met with him to review the talks with the Syrian delegation. After his government was formed, Rabin repeated the intention of his government to propose to ‘… the Palestinians and the Arab states that discussions continue according to the framework developed at the Madrid Conference. As a first step toward a permanent solution we will hold discussions on the beginnings of autonomy in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza strip …’ (Rabin, 1995, 16). On assuming office Rabin asked several unelected officials to continue working in the new government. Thus, Elyakim Rubinstein was asked to


continue serving as the government secretary and as head of the Israeli delegation to the talks with the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, and Yossi Hadas and Uri Lubrani were asked to continue with their service as foreign policy advisors. One of the first policy initiatives of the new government was the freezing of construction in the territories. As soon as the new government took office, the minister of construction and housing, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, issued an order to freeze the construction in the West Bank and Gaza. Subsequently, following a formal government decision, the ministry announced a freeze on the construction of housing units for which contracts had been signed, and a temporary freeze on the construction of buildings already started. Two weeks after the government began its term the number of housing units whose construction had been frozen had reached 11 981, of which 5367 were in the West Bank. Director-general Shimon Sheves initiated a major reorganization of the prime minister’s office.2 The new office included an operational staff unit headed by Sheves. The unit’s objective was to facilitate the planning and the implementation of infrastructure projects, including highways, schools, public housing, and sewage systems. Most members of the staff were former army officers whose ways of getting things done greatly differed from that of permanent civil servants in other government ministries. Sheves described his reorganization as ‘branching,’ based on the army terms ‘Staff Branch’ or ‘Operations Branch,’ conveying the greater authority of the ‘branch head’ who in the army is usually a general. The reorganization empowered the director-general, and strengthened the executive capability of the prime minister. However, it also created many points of friction between the prime minister’s office and government ministries, in particular the finance ministry and ministry of construction and housing. The Rabin transition started the personalization process of the prime minister’s office and at the same time reinforced both its centralization and the power of the prime minister. Rabin’s repeated assertion during the transition that he alone would lead government set the stage for his administration as well as for the subsequent transitions of the directly elected prime ministers. The reorganization of the prime minister’s office to better suit Rabin’s conception of executive governance increased centralization and


the authority of the director-general. But it also led to frictions with ministers and the top appointed officials in the ministries. Sheves attributed the frictions to the unwillingness of ministers to cooperate with the prime minister’s office (Ha’aretz, 15 October 1992, 3b) rather than being the inevitable consequence of centralization. Careful reorganization plans done before the elections could have lessened some of the organizational and coordination problems. Policy decisions made as soon as the new government took office, such as the freeze of public construction in the occupied territories, set the framework for new policy initiatives. From Rabin-Peres to Netanyahu: 1996 On 4 November 1995 prime minister Rabin was assassinated, and Peres succeeded him. Later the Labor party elected him to run against Netanyahu, head of the Likud, in the first direct election to prime minister held in 1996. As in the 1984 campaign, Peres formed a ‘first hundred day team,’ headed by Yossi Beilin and managed by Alon Liel. The team developed detailed policy recommendations on a variety of issues, including a comprehensive reorganization plan for government ministries and the prime minister’s office. In order to strengthen prime ministerial authority, the team recommended moving the civil service commission, the government companies authority, and the powerful budget department to the prime minister’s office. Peres’s anxiousness that plans might leak to the media, thus impairing his bargaining options in negotiating coalition agreements, led to his limited cooperation with team members compared with 1984. Near the end of his term, Peres made several important appointments, including Dani Yatom to head of the Mossad, Ze’ev Levne as the prime minister’s military secretary, and the reappointment Ya’akov Frankel as the governor of the central bank. Dani Nave, who was Netanyahu’s government secretary, criticized these appointments. In his words, ‘It was in poor taste to present the prime minister-elect Netanyahu with a fait accompli regarding several of the most important and sensitive positions in the prime minister’s office’ (Nave, 1999, 19–20). Although Netanyahu formed a first hundred days team, it never convened (Ha’aretz, 15 May 1996, 3a). According to Moshe Leon, who was close to Netanyahu and was appointed director-general of the prime minister’s office in 1998, no policy planning was done


due the uncertainties over Netanyahu’s chances of winning. Dani Nave, Netanyahu’s close political affiliate and later his cabinet secretary, reasoned that Netanyahu saw the party platform as a sufficient framework for the government’s policy-making. Yet Netanyahu held a large number of personal meetings with experts in the various areas of policy. In his victory speech, Netanyahu declared that his foremost objective as prime minister was to ‘heal the cleavages within the people.’ He emphasized that he intended to continue negotiations with the Palestinians and the Arab countries and even went on to compliment Peres. The victory speech was intended to transform Netanyahu’s image from the political leader of the right to a statesman, a prime minister representing the entire people. Three days after the victory speech Netanyahu first met with Peres to receive updates on sensitive security issues. The outgoing staff did not fully cooperate with the incoming staff. In fact, most of Peres’s staff left the prime minister’s office as soon as the election results were made known. In general, the outgoing government refrained from making binding decisions with long-term consequences. A notable exception was the decision to postpone the redeployment of the military in Hebron, despite a prior obligation to the PLO. When decisions on security matters were called for, such as the government’s reaction to the killing of three soldiers in Lebanon, Netanyahu was consulted (Ha’aretz, 9 June 1996, 1a). As the coalition government was formed, a transition team, headed by the director-general of the Likud, Avigdor Liberman, was established. The team made heavy use of plans prepared elsewhere, most notably those designed by the Beilin team. The Beilin ‘first hundred days’ plan was prepared in the prime minister’s office and passed on to the incoming staff according to the regulations set by the national archives that require professional material to be left in the office. Moreover, Liel who managed the Beilin team, was not immediately replaced and assisted the staff of the prime ministerelect. Prior to the transition, the civil service commission issued a set of regulations on political appointments that were initially disputed by the incoming staff, but following the legal recommendation of the state comptroller’s office they were activated. The coalition agreements focused on religious issues, including the conversion to Judaism by the orthodox tradition as the ultra-orthodox


parties demanded, and the increased funding of religious schools and institutions. The agreements also included a partial government reorganization scheme intended to strengthen the power of the prime minister: the transfer of government companies authority, the civil service commission, and the public broadcasting authority to the prime minister’s office. Later attempts to transfer also the public land authority and the budget department to the prime minister’s office failed, primarily because of intense disagreements within the government. A new ministry with vast jurisdiction, the ministry of national infrastructures, was established in order to meet Sharon’s demand for joining the cabinet. In the government’s first meeting, Netanyahu clarified the new status of the prime minister in the context of the electoral reform. Later the government decided to establish an economic council headed by Yaakov Frenkel, the governor of the Bank of Israel, and a national security council headed by David Ivri, who at that time was serving as director-general in the defense department (Ha’aretz, 20 June 1996, 2a). In its first meeting, the government also decided to dismiss Yitzhak Galnoor, the civil service commissioner, who among his other responsibilities oversaw the appointment process of senior civil servants. By replacing the commissioner with a person considered more sympathetic to the new government, hurdles to political appointments could have been avoided. A petition to the supreme court resulted in an interim order that the commissioner’s dismissal should be put on hold. A few days after the government’s first meeting, all the advisors in the prime minister’s office were dismissed and replaced by eight new advisors. The swift dismissals as well as the qualifications of the new personnel were strongly criticized in the media. The most problematic dismissal was that of the legal advisor to the office, Ahaz Ben-Ari. This is a highly professional position devoid of partisan influence. According to Liberman, the new director-general in the prime minister’s office, the dismissal was appropriate ‘because we want one of our own people.’ The state comptroller criticized the dismissal (Report No. 47, 843). Since the person intended to replace Ben-Ari was disqualified because he did not meet the criteria set by the civil service commission, the prime minister’s office was left for almost four months with no full-time legal advisor until Shimon Stein was appointed.


The new government’s capacity to govern effectively and legitimately was impaired due to the lack of experience of the incoming staff in government work, and deficiencies in preparatory policy and transition plans. Furthermore, Netanyahu delegated to Liberman the authority to form the coalition, to manage the transitions, and to make personnel changes in the prime minister’s office. Liberman’s highly centralizing style, narrow partisan focus, and often his breaches of regulations and accepted norms resulted in pointed media criticism, eroding the legitimacy of the prime minister. Furthermore, senior Likud politicians and ministers were not consulted in the formation of the governing coalition, nor were they informed of important policy moves in the prime minister’s office. For example, the economic and the national security councils were established without consulting the appropriate ministers. Netanyahu’s transition to power was fraught with severe problems. From Netanyahu to Barak: 1999 The transition of power from Netanyahu’s government to Barak’s was a lengthy one. Following his election as head of Labor and prime ministerial candidate in June 1977, Barak formed several teams of experts to develop policy agendas and recommendations for implementation. The teams addressed various public issues, including the military presence in Lebanon, the religious–secular discord, public education, economic performance, social welfare, and the reorganization of government ministries. A special team led by Shlomo Ben-Ami was set to prepare plans for the first hundred days. Although the team developed general policy guidelines for the new government, no implementation plans were considered. In contrast to the continuous dialog that evolved between Peres and his teams in 1984, Barak’s involvement in the teams’ work was rather limited. In January 1999, he formed an additional team headed by Haim Mendel-Shaked who had closer relations to Barak than the other team leaders. The team included former directorsgeneral of government ministries and legal advisors, and developed a proposal for reorganizing government ministries and the prime minister’s office. Among other things, the team recommended consolidation of domestic planning and construction in one planning and development authority in the prime minister’s office. This team was considerably more influential than others due primarily to the


trusted relations between Barak and Mendel-Shaked who was involved in the entire transition process and eventually appointed head of the prime minister’s bureau. At the end of February, following another round of fighting in Lebanon, Barak announced that if he were to be elected, he would remove the military forces from Lebanon within one year. Following his landslide win on 17 May 1999, Barak delivered his victory speech at the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, pledging to follow Rabin’s vision and to be the ‘prime minister of all.’ The outgoing government record of making long-term consequential decisions was mixed. For example, the outgoing defense minister Moshe Arens did not grant the army permission to react forcefully in Lebanon in response to rockets launched on Galilee that caused injury to citizens. Arens justified his decision to the press, saying that during a transition, it would be incorrect to take actions that might obligate the new government (Ha’aretz, 19 May 1999, 1a). Similarly, responding to prime minister-elect Barak’s request, Arens decided to refrain from making a decision regarding a large purchase of jet fighters. However, the outgoing planning and construction committee approved the annexation of Ma’aleh Adumim to Jerusalem, despite the military’s intelligence assessment that the approval was likely to have severe repercussions on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, even to the point of violent demonstrations in Jerusalem. Despite this, Arens approved the annexation plan. The period of overlap between Barak and Netanyahu began in early June. Moshe Leon, the outgoing director-general of the prime minister’s office, sent a memorandum to the heads of all the units in the office asking them to cooperate with the incoming staff. Detailed reports and updates were dully prepared and delivered to the incoming staff in an atmosphere of goodwill and cooperation (interviews with Batat and Herzog). The personalization and centralization of the prime minister’s office was clearly evident during the transition. Labor’s political leadership was not brought into Barak‘s inner circle that consisted primarily of personal loyalists. The coalition negotiations were managed by David Libai, Giora Eini, Gilad Sar, and Yitzhak Herzog, who was later appointed the government secretary. According to Libai and Sar, Barak’s aim was to distance politicians because, in his view,


they would be motivated primarily by personal interests (Ha’aretz, 5 June 1999, 2b). However, in order to strengthen his personal position in the cabinet Barak initiated an amendment in the Basic Law: The Government that would grant him the authority to increase the number of ministers in his cabinet. On 1 August 1999, the Knesset passed the amendment, and the cabinet was expanded to 23 ministers. Barak’s personal loyalists, Mendel-Shaked, Shimon Batat, Dani Yatom, and Zvi Shtauber, were appointed to influential positions in the prime minister’s office. The only notable exception was the appointment of Yossi Kutchik as director-general of the prime minister’s office. Kutchik, a highly regarded professional and experienced senior civil servant, was asked to coordinate and oversee domestic policies. Barak began his term in office by repeating his pledge to withdraw from Lebanon within one year. Three days later he flew to Egypt to meet with president Mubarak, a visit that marked the beginning of Barak’s diplomatic initiatives. Four days later he met with Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority. It was agreed that the peace negotiation with the Palestinians would resume in two months. Throughout the transition period, Barak announced time schedules and deadlines for his policy initiatives. Clearly, the consequences of the electoral reform coupled with Barak’s centralizing style strongly influenced the transition process as well as the government’s performance. Notwithstanding Labor’s electoral alliance with One Israel, the party was greatly weakened and its leadership was distanced by the prime minister. Barak’s ministerial appointments were criticized, and ministers often complained that they were neither consulted nor informed of policy initiatives and decisions. The reform has led to a greater disparity between the political interests of the prime ministerial candidate and the electoral interests of the party, leading to more friction and distrust. Moreover, the strengthened authority of the prime minister has intensified the centralization of the prime minister’s office at the expense of the cabinet and the Knesset. In sum, the most striking feature of the transition processes has been the absence of adequate and orderly preparations on the part of the prime ministerial candidates. New governments that did not sufficiently prepare for the transition encountered perceptible difficulties in advancing their preferred policies. Furthermore, often transitions


did not take place in an orderly manner. Whereas the 1984 and 1986 transitions were disordered and fraught with problems, the 1977 and 1999 transitions were considerably more organized with a large measure of cooperation between the outgoing and the incoming governments. The institutional regulations and norms for transitions have yet to be crystallized due to their large variability. Above all else, the transitions reflect the broader changes in Israeli politics. As executive governance has become more entrenched, the transitions have become more centralized and oriented to the prime ministerial candidates. Rabin’s transition in 1992 set the direction for subsequent transitions. The implementation of the electoral reform strongly reinforced the personalization of the transitions, in particular the reorganizations of the prime minister’s office to better suit the strengthened authority of the prime ministers themselves as well as their political ambitions. At the same time, the traditional roles of parties in transitions have declined and the cabinet, once formed, is more pointedly led by the prime minister and his inner circle of unelected advisors and appointees.

8 Balancing Executive Power

The twin trends of executive governance in Israel since the establishment of the state are expansion and consolidation. Executive dominance throughout the policy process has expressed itself through elected and nonelected officials and has come to be accepted as a norm with the inevitable evolution of modern, big government. The Knesset is in a decidedly inferior institutional position in terms of national policy-making, and while the judiciary asserted itself in the late 1980s and 1990s, its posture was more reactive than proactive. The electoral reform which led to the direct election of the prime minister strongly reinforced the predominance of the executive over the Knesset and the cabinet as a collective decision-making body. Winning an impressive majority of votes in the 1999 election, Prime Minister Barak consolidated the pattern of prime ministerial dominance at the expense of the cabinet and the Knesset established first by his predecessor Netanyahu. The electoral reform constitutionally and politically transformed the regime from a pure parliamentary type into a hybrid form characterized by a strong prime minister or quasi-presidential rule. The defeat of Barak by Sharon in the February 2001 elections was followed quickly by the repeal of the direct election of the prime minister. But the forces that strengthened the prime minister’s hand were not abated. The direct election of the prime minister was aimed primarily at resolving deadlocks of governance in Israel’s parliamentary democracy, but it in fact achieved quite the opposite effect. The reform eroded the electoral strength of the two big parties, Labor and 147


Likud, thus intensifying the Knesset’s partisan fragmentation. As a consequence, directly elected prime ministers became institutionally and personally more powerful while at the same time their ability to steer and govern became even more dependent on forming relatively stable and policy-coherent governing coalitions. Neither Netanyahu nor Barak could maintain governing coalitions, leading to early elections. Thus, despite the formal strengthening and consolidation of prime ministerial power, the capabilities of the political executive to govern accountably and effectively had been impaired. The ambivalence of the executive power dilemma, that is the inherent tension between institutional and personal accountability on the one hand and effective governance on the other, became even more acute in Israel’s evolving democracy. In democracies, the limits on executive power implied by constitutional and institutional arrangements and practices presuppose a viable institutional balance among the branches of government and among elected and nonelected officials. In order to realize the principles of accountability, transparency and performance, government institutions and actors must be constrained in their behavior and must be made aware of these constraints. The Israeli political system has not demonstrated these features. The history of executive power in Israel can be read as an attempt to probe the outer reaches of authority, legitimacy, and satisfactory governance with minimal concern for constitutional limits. Although legalism and formalism have flourished, that which is not specifically prohibited is considered to be permitted. The flexing of executive muscle has seen the short-circuiting of the legislature and the political parties. This has resulted with more frequent mention of the referendum as a mechanism to affirm policy positions, and the primaries to bypass representative institutions of the political parties on the grounds that these are too centralized and personalized. Parliamentary democracy with its emphasis on deliberation, bargaining, and compromise between organized representative groups with long-standing presence in the policy-making arena is weakened as ad hoc groups with varying agendas, interests, and attention spans emerge in the political sphere. The Knesset member covets a minister’s position, and the minister wishes to become prime minister. There is a unitary format of career mobility and it is a direct reflection of the institutional arrangements

Balancing Executive Power 149

that prevail. The prime minister decides, appoints, promotes, and initiates. The prime minister is the source of power in the political system and ambitious politicians strive to reach that office. The direct election of the prime minister was the ultimate expression of those drives. Obviously, prime ministers are not omnipotent. Prior to the introduction of the direct election of the prime minister their power depended primarily on their cabinet colleagues and the party leadership. Following the change, as both their popular sources of legitimacy and formal authority expanded, so did their dependence on a supportive governing coalition. When leading a party that is at the core of the parliament and the governing coalition, the prime minister’s power is enhanced by including other parties in the coalitions. Paying the price in terms of public policy, portfolio, or appropriations is acceptable if it enhances the strength of the ruling coalition. The direct election of the prime minister changed all that. The simultaneous results of the reform were to strengthen the prime minister while splintering the Knesset factions to a greater degree than known before. But since the prime minister still needed the majority of the Knesset to fulfill his new potential, he became the coordinator of an increasingly fragmented and policy-incoherent coalition, spending more time and energy on maintaining than on heading an institutionally more powerful executive. In the case of Israel it was the decoupling of the prime minister from the election of the legislature and the simultaneous emptying of the core of the coalition which ensured that the experiment would be a failure in governance. The return to a parliamentary system was achieved in 2001. The manner in which the prime minister was elected was not the only problem. The core of the problem was that the selection process of the prime minister was not connected to other important aspects of the regime. There were other issues dealt with in the law that introduced the direct election of the prime minister, but there was no comprehensive and integrative conception of governance guiding that reform. The parliament was to be elected as it had been in the past. The prime minister was to head the parliamentary list of his party. Yet there was no clear determination of the nature of the hybrid structure that was to emerge. Was there an expectation of more fusion of power at the expense of accountability? Was there an


expectation of a limited role for government? Was limited government or bureaucratic paralysis an acceptable ideological outcome for the Israeli system? The return to a parliamentary system is an important step and a hopeful beginning in the search for an appropriate balance between power and constraint, between legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness. There is an ongoing debate in political science about the relative importance of institutions and culture. What we learn from the Israeli case is that both matter, but that culture matters more. Having briefly left the group of countries that had a pure straightforward parliamentary system, the regularities of Israeli politics were retained even as one significant institutional feature was altered. The direct election of the prime minister augmented popular rule but it did not diminish the centrality of the coalition or the overwhelming importance of the leader and his personality. As in other democracies, Israel experienced a broadening of apparent public participation without really giving up much power to the voters. There was a decline of parliamentary democracy and a concomitant growth of populist forms. Civil society was not strengthened, the economy was still highly centralized, and greater measures of accountability and transparency were not introduced in the nonelected offices. The executive branch was elevated in power by the introduction of the direct election of the prime minister without a parallel restructuring of parliament. In fact, the reform focused primarily on the election of the prime minister and ignored the important relations between a prime minister who is simultaneously head of government and head of the list that stood for election for the parliament. Since the prime minister was directly elected, the influence of the party and its leadership in the election campaigns, in the formation of coalitions, and in governance was diminished. At the same time, a ‘balance of terror’ evolved between the parties that made up the Knesset majority and the prime minister as the head of the executive because each could dismiss the other. With a prime minister who could dissolve parliament with the agreement of the president of the State, and with a Knesset that could bring down the prime minister, much energy was shifted to the task of staying in power rather than to the burdens of governing. In democratic regimes the relationship between the legislature and the executive is structured by mutual checks and balances. In


pure parliamentary systems political legitimacy resides in the legislature, with the prime minister representing an extension of parliamentary legitimacy. In hybrid regimes a dual system of legitimacy often evolves intensifying the inevitable institutional conflict. In the Israeli case there are few checks and almost no balances. The possibility of different branches espousing different policy choices increases and challenges to legitimacy are more likely. In cases of policy disagreements the prime minister tends to appeal directly to the voters, bypassing the Knesset. The Knesset is not adequately equipped to fill the functions of legislation and oversight or to constrain executive power. More disturbingly, in recent years the Knesset has legislated populist bills with no sense of responsibility in terms of the source of the funding for these measures. Notwithstanding its power to dismiss the prime minister by a vote of no confidence, on most policy matters the Knesset is reactive rather than proactive. Moreover, when a parliament is highly fragmented the very attempts to fill legislative and oversight functions constitute a substantial source of political instability. The institutional rigidity of presidential systems tends to encourage patterns in which the balance of power can shift between institutions without jeopardizing either the tenure of the executive or the authority of the legislature. The flexibility of the hybrid system as it developed in Israel can cause political chaos and misdirection. The resources that prime ministers control are considerable. In addition to their role as head of government and leader of their party in the legislature, prime ministers control one of the most important government offices. Their large staff is assigned to serve their governance agenda and necessarily reflects the political program and personality of the incumbent prime minister. At their disposal are a director-general of the office, a bureau chief, the cabinet secretary, and advisors and aides on various topics, such as the media, political affairs, defense and economic matters. This staff that aids premiers and directors-general in managing the day-to-day work of the office and in coordinating and overseeing the implementation of policy decisions also has a long-term impact on the political system. The vicinity of the prime minister is an ideal place for talented and ambitious people and many who have served in the prime minister’s office or in the secretariat of the cabinet have later achieved impressive political careers of their own.


The details of governance are to be found in this environment. Contacts with other ministers, ministerial committees, work with Knesset delegations and members, and meetings with nonelected officials and representatives of major interest groups are funneled through the office of the prime minister. The prime minister is the natural focus of the nation’s attention but in the end he or she is part of a political system which relies heavily on a network of supports within his party, his coalition, and the attentive public. The growth of executive governance has occasioned greater specialization, organizational differentiation, professionalism, and the expectation of political neutrality. With the proliferation of nonelected authorities to fill these functions, the dilemma arises as to how to enhance government effectiveness and accountability while dealing with appointed officials. This is a problem for both the public and the elected officeholders who work with them. In democracies the nonelected authorities have considerable discretion in institutions created by legislatures including the public bureaucracies, central banks, officers of the law such as attorneys general and public prosecutors, and state comptrollers. They have evolved into relatively autonomous professional-political actors in their own right. As they grow in independent resources, institutional expertise and professional prestige they incorporate distinct organizational boundaries, professional values, operational norms, and ethical codes legitimated by autonomous national and international professional associations in order to separate themselves as much as possible from their initial creators. Professionalism and autonomy, in contrast to political expediency, are the core values advocated by nonelected public authorities. Nonelected institutions are increasingly independent within government, but obviously they are not independent of it. Consequently an inherent tension, occasionally erupting into downright conflict, characterizes the relations between nonelected and elected officials. The very performance of elected political executives, and often their political fortunes, depends to a large extent on decisions made by nonelected authorities. In most democracies, including Israel, the attorney general has the discretionary authority to define the public interest, while central bankers can make or break a presidency or a prime ministry.


Also significant are the backgrounds and personalities of the prime ministers. They make an enormous difference in the ability of the prime minister to interact with people successfully, in their capacity to govern, and in their success at achieving the goals they seek. But even more important for our argument are the similarities that stem from the political culture and from the institutional setting in which they operate. In the three cases we have considered in depth, each actor initiated a major policy change soon after coming to office, and two of them – Begin with Egypt, and Rabin with the Palestinians – were not easily predictable in advance. The same was true of Barak who initiated important moves with the Syrians and Palestinians, although these are not chronicled here. Peres also made great efforts to solve burning problems, but his focus on withdrawing from Lebanon and trying to curb hyperinflation were more predictable. It was common for many prime ministers to begin a new policy effort on a problem that had existed within the system for a good deal of time. In the nature of the Israeli reality, these generally had to do with relations with neighboring states. Begin explored an initiative with Egypt, Peres with Lebanon, Rabin with the Palestinians. They acted by themselves, keeping most coalition partners and senior civil servants unapprised of their plans. Generally they involved one other minister and that was usually not a long-time political ally, but more likely a sometime rival. Thus, Begin dealt with Dayan, Peres with Modai, and Rabin with Peres. Although senior officials such as the chief of staff and the director of the office of prime minister are crucial actors, they generally were apprised of these policy initiatives well after their inception. On the other hand, much use was made of personal advisors. This enhanced the likelihood of secrecy while leaving many senior players with bruised feelings. What was true of all of them, regardless of background and of leadership style, was that they kept most other cabinet members out of the picture. Each of them had one minister-confidant, Begin with Dayan, Peres with Modai, and Rabin with Peres. What is fascinating is to see how the chosen ally was not a long-time friend but rather a politician who was important in the immediate situation and in the present cabinet. Political loyalty and friendship were not extended


to these crucial moments in the nation’s history, indicating the importance of the governing culture when compared to the psychological closeness of old comrades and allies. Another indication of the importance of the political and of the cultural is that top civil servants were not important in the consultations, although they played key roles in the operations. Such important institutional actors as the chief of staff of the army, the secretary of the government, and the director of the office of the prime minister were generally outside of the loop. Ad hoc advisors were more important. This may have been done because advisors were better able to keep plans secret, but a deeper level of explanation points to the importance of keeping one’s own counsel while relying on good staff work and a pliant coalition. Variation in leadership skills mattered, but all of them faced similar organizational and institutional dilemmas. Peres was perhaps the best at bringing together people of different views and backgrounds and involving them in decision-making processes, but he failed time and again to be elected and had little time in office to excel. Regardless of style, the media were brought in when the situation was ripe, and not before. There was no evidence that the prime ministers felt the need to prepare public opinion. Developments in voting behavior are also relevant. In a sense, Israeli elections have been personalized and privatized. The prime minister is directly elected, and he then becomes the focus of power and policy. But since he cannot rule without a majority in the Knesset, he becomes hostage to coalition negotiations in both time and money. And since the system now fosters middle- and smallsized parties, those parties have greater bargaining power in the absence of large-sized parties. Election campaigns focus on the personalities of the candidates for prime minister, momentarily forgetting that after the campaign, much of Israeli politics will continue as before. Candidates are at the center of the stage, rather than political parties. Sectarian politics are on the rise; political parties are changing and more of them resemble single-issue or singleconstituency interest groups. Voting also becomes privatized as we encounter increased issue voting. Many Israeli politicians reacted to the hybrid form developing in Israel with alarm. Politicians far from the prime minister’s seat quickly drew the conclusion that the diminution of the Knesset in


the equation of power was a political mistake; it is noteworthy that the two major politicians of the era, Netanyahu and Barak, did not share that view. Theirs was a position driven by how they won the prime minister’s office and where they sat, since the potential political power for a directly elected prime minister was most appealing. However, there were three major reasons to expect that the electoral reform would accomplish the exact opposite of what its designers intended. First, the new law institutionalizes more opportunities for small parties to bargain with prime ministerial candidates, and then with the prime minister-elect. To raise their chances of winning the election, candidates are asked to promise a variety of payoffs to small parties in return for their support in the first round and the second round of the direct elections, and then during the coalition formation process. Second, the new rule reverses the incentive of voters to vote strategically for the big parties or bloc leaders in the Knesset. Inevitably, the big parties lose seats, reducing the likelihood that a major, central party would capture the parliamentary core and pursue relatively consistent policies. Moreover, any governing coalition would have to rely on many partners to form a comfortable majority in the Knesset and to maintain itself in power. This, in turn, increases both the fragmentation of government itself and the payoffs to secondary coalition partners. Third, by weakening the institution of the vote of no confidence, the reform limits the disciplinary capability of prime ministers as well as the effectiveness of parliamentary oppositions. A similar range is evident regarding the transition processes so vital to a functioning democracy. Some rules exist but norms of fair play are rarely in evidence. Much depends on the relations between the candidates. In a small country such as Israel, in which political passions run high and the careers of leading politicians are likely to intersect, the styles and interpersonal relations of politicians become crucial variables. Most new office-holders are exhausted by the election campaign just concluded and are likely to confuse a campaign speech with government policy. Accordingly, little orderly preparation is generally made for the eventuality of victory. For example, the strained relations between the two overshadowed the transitions between Shamir and Peres in 1984 and between Peres and Shamir in 1986. On the other hand, the transition in 1977 between Rabin and Begin was more cordial. Netanyahu’s group did


not receive much cooperation from the outgoing Peres government, but Barak’s transition from Netanyahu was much smoother. The period of the direct election of the prime minister left its mark on the transition phase. Rabin’s transition in 1992 was a harbinger as the reform had already been legislated, to take effect in the next election. The authority of the prime minister was enhanced and party considerations diminished. The 1992–2001 period will be remembered in Israeli politics as one of prime ministerial primacy, and the personal ambitions of the candidates, especially Netanyahu and Barak, accelerated the features of the system that undermined parliamentary democracy. Person, institution, and constitution are all important in unraveling the story of executive governance in Israel. The prime minister is the supreme political actor, and the personality of the leader is crucial. David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin achieved their dominance in Israel’s political history and public consciousness by leading the two contesting parties and by being charismatic premiers. Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995 afforded him a unique and tragic place in Israel’s history as well. Israeli prime ministers have enormous power and they have been known to make fateful decisions, sometimes alone. Ben-Gurion could conceive and plan the 1956 Sinai operation without the prior knowledge of his cabinet. Golda Meir’s rejection of Egyptian overtures in the early 1970s, Begin’s decision regarding the feasibility of a peace treaty with Egypt at the end of that decade, and Rabin’s conclusions regarding the Palestinians in 1993, are all examples of prime ministerial initiative even though they were surrounded by colleagues who had differing opinions, or who knew nothing of the decisions about to be taken. The biographies of Israel’s prime ministers provide useful material: Seven (with the exceptions of Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, and Sharon) were associated with the labor movement, seven (with the exceptions of Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak, and Sharon) were born in Eastern Europe, eight (with the exceptions of Rabin, Netanyahu, and Barak) achieved the prime ministry at an advanced age after long careers in party-related political work. Most headed their political party, and all of them could be considered professional politicians. The growing concentration of power in the office of the prime minister took on constitutional expression when the Knesset adopted


the law for the direct election of the prime minister, first implemented in 1996. Separation of the branches of government was sundered by this legislation because the candidate for prime minister was required to lead his party’s list in the parliamentary election. Accordingly, the prime minister was not only head of the executive branch and the cabinet, she or he is also chief legislator (cf. Linz and Valenzuela, 1994). If the original constitutional definition of the prime ministerial position in Israel was primus inter pares, after the new law he was simply first. However, the new system lacked an integrating concept of governance and it was repealed in 2001. It enervated political parties and weakened the Knesset, while increasing the bargaining position of medium-sized and small parties, and concentrating excessive powers in the hands of the prime minister, the most powerful actor in the system by far, even before the reform. The reform followed an attempt in 1990 by Labor’s Shimon Peres to replace the government headed by the Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir. After a promise was made public of cash payment in the event of default, the Knesset was moved to reform the system, if only partially and imperfectly. But these reforms were piecemeal and incomplete. The repeal of the direct election of the prime minister occurred in 2001 and the previous system was reinstated with one important change. That change was the addition of the constructive vote of no-confidence in which an alternative government must be proposed in order to topple the current government. Doing away with the direct election of the prime minister was the appropriate first step, but it did not go far enough to achieve a balance in the elements of system to lead to an improved version of parliamentary democracy. Precisely because of the inherent strength of the office of prime minister was the direct election such an inappropriate plan for the Israeli political system. The reform left the office top-heavy because it was forced to stand on the thin legs of the weakened Knesset. It would be better for the prime minister, for the Knesset, and for the country’s democracy if a more finely calibrated system could be devised. One important element of that re-calibration must be sought in the party system. Any feature that encourages fractionalization and fragmentation is not to be encouraged. Still, since the principle of proportionality is important in a society racked with social


and ethnic cleavages, disbanding an electoral system that gives expression to the variety of opinions in Israeli system is not wise. A more judicious solution would seek to use the political parties as the articulators of interests and opinions but in a manner that would reward aggregation of these interests and opinions before the elections. Doing so afterwards in the stage of coalition formation has been the cause of much of the political anxiety that the country has faced in recent years, regardless of the method of selecting the prime minister. One way of doing this is to adopt a mixed national-regional system of representation with multi-member districts. Thus, for example, the country could be divided into districts (either using the administrative units already in place or drawing new districts by a neutral board) to give expression to changes in periodic population shifts. The minimum percentage for winning national representation would then be set well above the present 1.5 percent but low enough (say 3 percent) to provide incentives to groups that wish to compete for office. Parties would compete at both national and regional levels and would be awarded representation only in the event of achieving the minimum percentage at the national level. Another reform that would revitalize political parties would be to permit voters to arrange the list of candidates or to accept the list proposed by the parties. The present system allows no role for voters in ordering the list. That option exists for parties that hold primaries but not all voters participate in the primaries and past experience has shown that parties are open to manipulation, and that candidates exhaust their energies in the primary and are less active in the actual race for the Knesset. Asking voters to select the party and to order its candidates simultaneously would lead to greater intensity on the part of the activists and greater interest on the part of voters. Rescinding the direct election of the prime minister has provided a new opportunity to revitalize parties and Israeli democracy. The choice of prime minister will again be a result of the election system and not a focus of it. As in other parliamentary systems, the conception of the prime minister will again be the head of the executive committee of the Knesset, and not an actor with president-like or even monarch-like qualities. The fortunes of the prime minister will again become an extension of the fortunes of the political party of the prime minister.


But it is important not to return to the patterns in force before the ill-conceived direct election of the prime minister reform and to the behaviors that led to such a strong and inappropriate reaction. This can be done by enforcing ministers’ resignation from the Knesset upon their appointment as minister (known in Israel as the Norwegian Law) in order to leave sufficient manpower in the Knesset to do the important work of legislation and oversight. Those roles shift to the government when many of the Knesset members supporting the governing coalition are busy with ministerial functions. Knesset committees are weakened since the vocal and active members tend to be opposition members. The Knesset is in danger of becoming the opposition branch of government rather than an equal partner in governance. The constructive vote of no confidence in the government is an important and welcome innovation. Mandating an alternative prime minister at the time of the vote will prevent the vacuum created when a prime minister is toppled without immediately replacing him with another. The authority of the Knesset must be strengthened and the executive branch must be made aware that it has a partner in governance that enjoys the legitimacy, conferred by the populace. Making it accountable for its actions can strengthen the Knesset. For example, the national budget should not be the plaything of legislators. When proposed legislation is to add to the national budget, the Knesset must assume the responsibility of finding the resources for that project or refrain from the legislation, just as the ministry of finance and the government are expected to do. The Knesset must be transformed into a responsible and not a populist branch of government. The prime minister of Israel and the executive branch are extremely powerful, although, as we have seen, that power is not unlimited. What is lacking in the governance system is a greater sense of balance. Until that is achieved, Israeli democracy will remain in the shadow of instability and uncertainty.

Notes Chapter 7 Transition of Government Power 1. Yossi Ben-Aharon, in an interview conducted for this study. Novik, in an interview for this study, confirmed that the staffs of both Shamir and Peres sabotaged the government transitions of 1984 and 1986. 2. Uzi Benziman, Ha’aretz, Oct. 16, 1992, p. 3b. According to Eitan Haber, a personal aide to Rabin, the prime minister barely examined Sheves’s initiatives and reforms (Haber, interview).

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List of interviews The interviews were conducted by Doron Navot. After the interviewee’s name is the position filled relevant to our study, and the date and location of the interviews. Some of the interviews were conducted by telephone, as also indicated. Haim Asa (as strategic advisor to Rabin during 1992) – 19.2.99, Herzelia. Shimon Batat (as assistant to the head of the Prime Minister’s Bureau under Ehud Barak) – 14.9.99, telephone interview. Yosef Ben-Aharon (as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office during 1986–92) – 9.9.99, Jerusalem. Michael Ben-Yair (as Attorney General during 1993–96) – 23.9.99, Tel Aviv. Supreme Court Justice (retired) Haim Cohen (as State Attorney General during 1950 –60) – 28.7.99, Jerusalem. Professor Yehezkel Dror (expert on public administration) – 24.6.99, Jerusalem. Amos Eran (as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office during 1974 –77) – 18.8.99, telephone interview. Yehezkel Flumin (as Assistant Minister of Finance during 1977–78 and as member of the Yosef Rom Committee on Governmental Transition) – 29.11.98, Tel Aviv. Aharon Fogel (as Director-General of the Finance Ministry during 1992–94) – 5.9.99, Tel Aviv. Professor Yitzhak Galnor (as Civil Service Commissioner during 1994 –96) – 18.2.99, Jerusalem. Avi Gil (as head of the Prime Minister’s Bureau under Peres, November 1995 – June 1996) – 16.6.99, Tel Aviv. Aryeh Goldstein (as a member of the Rom Committee on governmental transition) – 1.12.98, telephone. Eitan Haber (as Rabin’s Bureau head during 1992–95) – 10.8.99, Ramat Gan. Yehezkel Hermelech (as coordinator of the Committee of Directors for Regions of National Priority, Head of the National Projects Authority – June 1992 – January 1995) – 3.2.99, Tel Aviv.

Bibliography 169

Yitzhak Herzog (as Government Secretary from July 1999) – 15.10.99, telephone. Yehiel Kadishai (as personal secretary to Menachem Begin during 1977–83) – 19.11.98, Tel Aviv. Moshe Leon (as Assistant Director of the Prime Minister’s Office in 1996 and Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office during 1998–99) – 26.7.99, Ramat Gan. Dr Alon Liel (as coordinator of the governmental transition team of the Labor Party in 1996) – 31.1.99, Tel Aviv. Aharon Lishansky (Assistant Government Secretary and member of the Government Office since 1967) – 12.12.98, Jerusalem. M. K. Dan Meridor (as Government Secretary during 1982–84) – 2.12.98, Jerusalem. Dr Aryeh Naor (as Government Secretary during 1977–82) – 20.12.98, Jerusalem. M. K. Dani Nave (as Government Secretary during 1996–98) – 8.3.99, Tel Aviv. The fifth President of the State of Israel Yitzhak Navon (as secretary to Ben-Gurion) – 10.12.98, Jerusalem. Amnon Neubach (as member of Beilin’s ‘hundred days’ team during 1983–84) – 30.6.99, Ramat Gan. Dr Nimrod Novik (as state advisor to Peres and member of the ‘hundred days’ team during 1983–84) – 31.5.99, Hertzelia. Dr Elyakim Rubinstein (as State Attorney General since February 1997 and as Government Secretary during 1986–94) – 10.8.99, Jerusalem. Yossi Russo (as head of the Control Branch, and head of the National Projects Administration during 1993–94) – 20.1.99, Re’ut. President of the Supreme Court (retired) Meir Shamgar (as State Attorney General during 1968–75) – 18.8.99, Jerusalem. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (as Prime Minister during 1983–84, 1986–92) – 6.12.98, Jerusalem. Dr Emmanuel Sharon (as Director-General of the Finance Ministry during 1984 –86) – 16.9.99, Jerusalem. Shimon Shebes (as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office during 1992–95) – 14.1.99, Ramat Gan. Shimon Stein (as Legal Advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office during 1996–99) – 28.7.99, Jerusalem. Joel Singer (as a private advisor to Yitzhak Rabin in Oslo Accords) – 2.8.99, telephone interview. Avraham Tamir (as Director–General of the Prime Minister’s Office during 1984 –86) – 22.1.99, Tel Aviv. Gad Yaacobi (minister in the first Rabin administration during 1974 –77) – 31.1.99, 5.7.99, Tel Aviv. Aryeh Zohar (member of the Government Office since 1972) – 21.12.98, 4.1.99, Jerusalem.

Index Abu-Alla, 123 Abu-Mazen, 122 Accountability, 8, 17, 23, 31, 34, 43, 61, 80, 84, 148 Activism, 65–6 Advisors, 54, 58–9, 146, 153 Agenda setting, 52–3 Agranat committee, 64 Ahdut Haavoda, 38 Allon, Yigal, 38 Appel, David, 72, 73 Arabs, 57, 58, 107, 108–14 Arafat, Yasser, 125, 145 Archives Law, 130 Arens, Moshe, 113, 116, 144 Ariav, Haim, 69 Aridor, Yoram, 77 Arnon, Michael, 50, 51 Aron, R., 4 Ashwari, Hanan, 122–3 Attorney-general, 36, 51, 61, 62, 63–75, 131 Australia, 26 Austro-Hungary, 5 Authorities, nonelected, see Nonelected authorities Avi-Yitzhak, 72, 73 Avriel, Ehud, 51 Bank of Israel, 62, 75–80, 82, 118, 142 Governor, 36, 61, 75–80 Law, 75–80 Bank share crisis, 118 Barak, Aharon. 72, 111, 112, 125 Barak, Ehud, 58, 59, 74, 77, 82, 89–90, 94, 99, 111, 147, 156 and Cabinet, 41, 43, 44 and Knesset, 36, 38, 39 transition, 143–6 Baram, Uzi, 44

Bar-On, Roni, 62, 64, 70 – 4 Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation, 66 Basic Law: Human Rights and Dignity, 66 Basic Law: State Comptroller, 80 –1 Basic Law: The Government, 50, 52, 85, 130, 145 Baumol, W. J., 14 Begin, Benjamin, 44 Begin, Menachem, 38, 51, 57, 107, 115, 122, 127, 153, 156 peace with Egypt, 108–14 transition 131–5 Beilin, Yossi, 44, 50, 51, 115, 121–5, 136, 137, 140, 141 Beirut, 115–17 Bejski Commission, 81 Ben-Aharon, Yossi, 137, 138 Ben-Ami, Shlomo, 143 Ben-Ami, Shlomo, 44 Ben-Ari, Ahaz, 142 Ben-Eliezer, Binyamin, 139 Ben-Elisar, Eliyahu, 56, 112 Ben-Gurion, David, 24, 36, 41, 50, 51, 54 –5, 58, 110, 111, 114, 156 Ben-Porat, Miriam, 81, 83 Ben-Shahar, 136 Ben-Yair, Michael, 69, 70 – 4 Ben-Yoram, Miriam, 136 Berglas, Eitan, 119, 136 Bicameral legislatures, 11 Big government, 24 –6 Blondel, J., 11 Britain, 26–30, 128 Cabinet Secretariat, 32, 49–50 Cabinet system, 3 parliamentarism, 22, 26–30 prime minister, 32 tradition, 48–9 Broadcasting Authority, 142 171

172 Index

Brownlow Committee Report on Administrative Management, 31 Bruno, Michael, 79, 115, 119, 136 Budgeting, 14, 34, 49, 75–80, 99–101, 135–7 Bundesbank, 62 Bureaucracy, 15–17, 27, 30 – 4, 61 Burg, Avraham, 44 Bus Line #300 Affair, 64 Bush, George, 62 Cabinet, 12, 13, 22, 32–3, 41–9 committees, 29, 46–8, 50, 52, 55 ministers, 35, 41–9 Secretariat, 49–53, 131, 151 Camp David, 43, 110, 112–13 Canada, 26 Carey, J. M., 28 Carter, Jimmy, 109, 110 Ceaucescu, Nikolae, 134 Censorship, 66 Center Party, 43 Checks and balances, 9, 80, 150 –1 Chief executives, 3, 4 Churchill, Winston, 24 Civil Service, 28, 32– 4, 66 Civil Service Commission, 51, 74, 131, 141, 142 Coalition formation, 8, 36, 38, 41–9, 93–103, 141–2 Cohen, Haim, 68 Collective responsibility, 29–30, 36, 43 Committees, 13 Confidence, vote of, 8, 36, 41, 43, 97–103, 159 Congress, 5, 9 Consensual democracy, 11 Conservative party, 22 Constitutional engineering, 20 Constitutional monarchies, 6 Corwin, E. S., 21 Crossman, R.H.S., 22 Dayan, Moshe, 38, 107, 108–14, 125, 133, 134, 153

Democratic deficit, 61, 62 Democratic Movement for Change, 103, 131, 133 Deri, Arye, 67, 70 – 4 Dimona, 114 Direct election of the prime minister, 1, 7, 23, 38– 41, 86, 149–50, 156–9 Director general of the prime minister’s office, 49, 51, 54 –8, 139, 151 Divided majorities, 5 Donoughue, B., 43 Economic planning, 55 Effective number of parties, 90 –3 Egypt, 47, 56, 90, 107, 108–14, 134, 153, 156 Ehrlich, Simcha, 132, 133 Eini, Giora, 144 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 31 Eitan, Raful, 44, 89, 115, 116 Electoral reform, 2, 52, 57–8, 86, 94 –8, 102–5, 129–30, 142, 147–8, 155 Electoral system, 35–6, 38– 41, 43, 59, 94 –8, 102–5, 147–8 Emergency legislation, 39– 41 Employment Act of 1946, 15 Entitlements, 14 –15 Eran, Amos, 55–6, 132–3 Erhard, Ludwig, 62 Eshkol, Levi, 36, 48, 50, 55, 110, 111 European Jewry, 69 Executive governance, 2–17, 30 – 4, 39– 41 and nonelected authorities, 61–84 Executive office organization, 11–14, 30 – 4 Executive power, 4 –10, 19–34 Federal Reorganization Act, 31 Federal Reserve Board, 62 Fenno, R., 12 Finer, R., 20

Index

Finland, 5, 6 Flumin, Yehezkel, 132 Foley, M., 12 Fractionalization, 90 –1 Fragmentation of party system, 87–93, 102–3 France, 5, 8, 13–14 France, Fifth Republic, 4, 6, 7 France, Third Republic, 4, 6 Franchise, 3 Frenkel, Yaakov, 77, 79, 140, 142 Gafni, Arnon, 79 Gahal, 112 Galnoor, Yitzhak, 142 Gaza, 138, 139 Gazit, Mordechai, 55–6 Gemayel, Bashir, 115 General Zionist party, 69 Geneva Conference, 109, 110, 132 Germany, 23, 26 Germany, Weimar Republic, 5, 6–7 Gesher, 44, 89, 98 Governance, see Executive governance Government Companies Act, 74 Government Yearbook, 55 Great Society programs, 15 Greenspan, Alan, 62 Greenstein, F., 23 Greenwald, 68 Gur, Mordechai, 112 Haber, Eitan, 124 Hadas, Yossi, 139 Hanegbi, Tzachi, 62, 70 – 4 Harel unit, 124 Hason, Ayala, 72 Hausner, Gideon, 64 Hebron, 72, 141 Herut, 92, 108 Herzog, Chaim, 112 Herzog, Itzhak, 50, 144 Herzog, Yaacov, 55–56 Hirschfield, Yair, 122

173

Histadrut, 108, 117–21, 136 Hoffman, S., 4 –5 Hollander, Shmuel, 51 Holocaust, 68 Horowitz, Eli, 119 Horowitz, Yigael, 117 Huber, J. D., 98 Hundred days, 127, 135, 136, 140, 141 Huseini, Feisal, 123 Hussein, King of Jordan, 110, 134 Hybrid regimes, 4 –5, 8, 11, 12, 23 Immunity, 67 Imperial presidency, 12 Incitement, 69 India, 24 Inflation, 107, 118–21, 132 Interest groups, 16 International Monetary Fund, 76 Intifada, 122 Iraq, 127 Ireland, 23 Israel, 24, 26 cabinet secretariat, 49–53 defense forces, 111 executive power, 23–34 president, 36, 130 prime minister, see Prime Minister, in Israel Ivri, David, 142 James, S., 29 Jerusalem, 109, 110, 138, 144 Jewish Agency, 117 Jewish law, 133 Johnson, Lyndon, 15 Jones, C. O., 16 Jones, G., 22 Jordan, 108, 110, 121, 124, 134 Jowell, J., 74 Judicial review, 66 Kadishai, Yechiel, 112 Kahan Commission, 116 Kaisar, Israel, 119, 120

174 Index

Kastner affair, 68–9 Kastner, Yisrael, 68 Katz, Katriel, 50 Knesset, 2, 7, 33, 36, 38–41, 64, 66, 74, 80, 84, 86, 93–103, 118, 124, 130, 133, 134, 136, 147–8, 157 Kolleck, Teddy, 51, 54 Kutchik, Yossi, 58, 145 Labor Party, 42, 47, 57, 83, 87–93, 98, 99, 104, 109, 111, 116–17, 131, 134, 136– 40, 145, 147–8 Lebanon, 107, 115–17, 118, 144, 145 Legislative power, 4 –10, 19–20 Legitimacy, 3, 10 –11, 27–8, 39 Leon, Moshe, 58, 140, 144 Levne, Ze’ev, 140 Levy, David, 44, 89, 116 Libai, David, 144 Liberal party, 108, 113 Liberman, Avigdor Yvette, 51, 58, 72, 73, 141, 143 Liel, Alon, 140, 141 Lijphart, A., 4 Likud, 42, 43, 44, 47, 56, 65, 72, 77, 83, 87–93, 98, 99, 104, 108–14, 116–17, 131, 134 –5, 136– 40, 147–8 Linz, J., 27 Lloyd George, David, 24 Lubrani, Uri, 139 Ma’aleh Adumim, 144 Madrid Conference, 121, 138 Mandelbaum, Moshe, 77 Mapai, 38, 42, 51, 68, 87, 112, 114, 117 Mapam, 87–8 Mass parties, 3 Median voter, 16 Meimad, 44, 89 Meir, Golda, 36, 41, 50 –1, 110, 111, 121, 156 Melchior, Michael, 44 Mendel-Shaked, Haim, 143– 4, 145

Meretz, 102 Meridor, Dan, 44, 50, 51 Minister of Justice, 63 Ministerial defense committee, 46, 117 Ministry of Finance, 34, 44, 49, 75–80, 159 of Infrastructure, 44, 132, 142 of Justice, 58 of Science, 44 Modai, Yitzhak, 42, 119, 120, 125, 153 Monopolies, 14 Mordechai, Yitzhak, 43 Morocco, 109, 110, 133 Mossad, 36, 66, 140 Mubarak, Hosni, 145 Naor, Arie, 50, 51 National Religious Party, 42 National Security Council, 57, 142 National Unity Government, 42, 47, 111, 116, 118–19 Nave, Dani, 50, 51, 140, 141 Navon, Yitzhak, 111–12 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 24 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 36, 38, 58, 59, 62, 79, 89, 98, 99, 104, 108–9, 144, 147, 155–6 and Attorney-General, 70 – 4 and Cabinet, 41, 43, 44 and Knesset, 36, 38 transition, 140 –3 Neubach, Amnon, 136, 137 Neustadt, R., 1, 9, 21 New Deal, 15 Niskanen, W. A., 16 Nixon, Richard, 12 Nonelected authorities, 60 –84, 152 Norton, P., 22 Norwegian Law, 159 Novick, Nimrod, 137 Office of the Prime Minister, 2, 11, 49–58, 120 Officials, nonelected, 49

Index

One Israel, 89, 145 Oslo accords, 43, 69, 89, 108, 121–5 Owens, J. E., 12 Palestine Authority, 144, 145 Palestine Liberation Organization, 107, 115, 119, 121–5, 141 Palestinians, 51, 72, 90, 110, 111, 122, 124, 138, 141, 153, 156 Palmach, 124 Parliamentary systems, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 18, 21, 23, 26–30, 30 – 4, 41 Pat, Gideon, 116 Patronage, 33 Peres, Shimon, 42, 47, 57, 78, 89, 90, 94, 107, 111, 121–5, 127 as Prime Minister, 114 –1, 153, 154, 157 transitions, 135– 43 Personality factors, 23, 106–5, 153 Platform legislation, 33– 4 PLO, 42 Poland, 38 Policy-making process, 18 Political economy, 14 –17 Political institutions, 18 Political manager, 30 – 4 Political parties, 2, 19, 29, 33, 157–8 Power-sharing, 60 –84 Presidential systems, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11–13, 18, 21, 23, 30 – 4, 41 Presidential Transition Act, 127 Preuss, Hugo, 7 Prime Minister and Knesset, 38– 41, 150 –1 in Britain, 22 in Israel, 7, 23, 32– 4, 35–8, 157–9 See also Direct election Primus inter pares (‘First among equals’), 20, 35, 48, 157 Public goods, 14, 26 Public opinion, 2, 103–5, 122 Public prosecutor, 61, 63 Pundak, Ron, 122

175

Rabin, Yitzhak, 36, 38, 42, 57, 69, 70, 77, 89, 94, 104, 107, 111, 116–17, 119, 120, 146, 153, 155, 156 Oslo Accords, 121–5 transitions, 132–133, 137–140 Rabinowitz, Yehoshua, 79 Rafael, Yitzhak, 42 Rafi, 103 Rationalization of executive power, 26–30, 61 Rational–legal paradigm, 28, 33 Reagan. Ronald, 115 Redistributive policies, 14 Religious parties, 93–103, 141–2 Right-wing groups, 69 Rom, Yosef, 132 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 23, 24, 31 Rosen, Meir, 112 Rubinstein, Amnon, 103 Rubinstein, Elyakim, 50, 51, 62, 70 – 4, 124, 138–9 Rule of law, 69–70 Russia, 5, 121 Sabra, 113, 116 Sadat, Anwar, 108–14, 134 Sapir, Pinhas, 121 Sar, Gilad, 144 Sartori, G., 4, 5 Savir, Uri, 124 Schmidt, Helmut, 62 Schofield, N., 96 Secrecy, 53 Semi-presidential regimes, 7 Sened, I., 96 Separation of powers, 9, 41 Shahal, Moshe, 81 Shamir, Yitzhak, 42, 57, 93, 104, 113, 115, 116, 119, 135– 40, 155, 156, 157 Sharanksy, Natan, 73 Sharett, Moshe, 36, 42, 68, 76, 111 Sharon, Ariel, 36, 39, 41, 44, 89, 90, 94, 107, 111–13, 115–17, 132, 138, 142, 147, 156

176 Index

Sharon, Emmanuel, 119, 137 Shas, 67, 72, 98, 102 Shatilla, 113, 116 Sherf, Zeev, 50, 51, 54 Sheves, Shimon, 57, 137– 40 Shinui, 103 Shochat, Avraham, 77 Shugart, M. S., 29, 102 Simon, H. A., 28 Sinai, 108, 110, 111, 113, 134 Singer, Gideon, 124 Singer, Yoel, 124 –5 Solomon, S., 62 Soviet Union, 134 Special elections for prime minister, 38 Split-ticket voting, 2 Stabilization plan, 117–21 State comptroller, 62, 80 – 4, 141, 142 Stein, Shimon, 142 Stepan, A., 27 Supreme Court, 61, 66, 67 Syria, 115, 134, 138, 153 Taagepera, R., 102 Taba, 47. 124 Tamir, Avraham, 112, 137 Telem, 109 Term limits, 39 Term of office, 4 Thatcher, Margaret, 22, 30 Transition of power, 74, 126–31 in 1977, 131–5 in 1984, 135–7 in 1986, 137 in 1992, 137– 40 in 1996, 140 –3 in 1999, 143–6

Transparency, 31, 34, 84, 148 Truman, Harry S, 127 Tunis, 121, 124 Turner, Ya’akov, 81–2 Tyre, 116 Tzomet, 44, 89, 98 United States, 5, 8, 15, 26, 31–2, 110 –15, 116, 119, 127, 134 bureaucracy, 31–2 Constitution, 20 president, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12–13, 21 Uzai, Yael, 50 Venezuela, 8 Veto power, 8 Voting decisions, 16 Weber, Max, 6, 27, 30 Weizman, Ezer, 42, 57, 109–15 West Bank, 138, 139 White House staff, 12, 13, 31–2, 127 Wilson, H., 22 World Bank, 76 World Zionist Organization, 117 Y2K bug, 83 Yaacobi, Gad, 115, 119, 120, 132, 136 Yadin, Yigael, 103 Yaton, Dani, 140 Yom Kippur war, 38, 108, 117, 121, 131 Yosef, Dov, 64 Zamir, Yitzhak, 64, 65, 130 Ze’elim, 82 Zionist leadership, 69

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