Original scientific paper
Direct Elections for Prime Minister: Collapse of the Israeli Experiment
Mirjana KASAPOVIĆ
; Faculty of Political Sciences, Zagreb
Abstract
In Israel, in the period from 1992 to 2002, for the first and
only time in the history of modern democracies, the law was
changed to enable direct elections for the prime minister.
This was an attempt to avoid the weaknesses of the political
system which were mostly attributed to the strict proportional
representation in electing the Knesset: a high degree of
fragmentation and ideological polarisation of the
parliament, excessive power of small sectarian parties,
lengthy processes of forming coalition governments,
dysfunction of government and political institutions in
general. Direct elections for prime minister were supposed to
increase stability, efficiency and legitimacy of the prime
minister, government and political system. The reform was
unsuccessful because the expectations of its creators – that
the voters would adapt to the new institutional rules – failed
to materialise. Instead of expressing an undivided political
loyalty to the candidate for prime minister and his party, most voters divided their votes in the simultaneous elections
for prime minister and parliament: the huge majority gave
one vote to the candidate for prime minister of one of the
two biggest parties, Labour or Likud, while the second vote
was used massively to support small parties. The reform
additionally deepened the crisis of the political system and
produced numerous theoretical dilemmas about its nature.
Keywords
Israel; parliamentary crisis; elections for prime minister; prime ministerial presidentialism
Hrčak ID:
31150
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2008.
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