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11. The Bias of Pluralism: The Redistributive Effects of the New Electoral Law
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CHAPTER 11 The Bias of Pluralism The Redistributive Effects of the New Electoral Law DAVID NACHMIAS and ITAISENED Tel Aviv University On March 18, 1992, on its last day before disbanding, the Knesset changed the electoral system in Israel. This momentous institutional change was implemented in the fourteenth general election on May 29, 1996. The initiative to reform the electoral law emanated from widespread dissatisfaction over government performance. A grassroots movement led by prominent law professors and Knesset members attributed the stalemate in Israeli politics during the 1980s primarily to coalition politics: small parties, particularly the religious ones, gained disproportionate influence in the coalition formation process, thus weakening the discretionary authority of the prime minister over the formation of national public policies, and bestowing them with larger than deserved shares of public resources and symbolic commitments . The institutional change was supposed to remedy this situation. Our findings show that the institutional reform in the electoral law significantly decreased the electoral strength of the big parties and inevitably augmented the bargaining power of the religious and other small parties. From the reformers' perspective, the outcome of the electoral change was counterintuitive. However, from a theoretical perspective , the present chapter argues that the consequences were to be expected. In the first section, we examine the electoral rule used in Israel between 1951-1992, and discuss the political reasons for the widespread dissatisfaction with this institutional arrangement. In the second section, the major attributes of the new law are described, 269 270 Nachl1lias and SCllcd along with the unrealizable expectation that it would constitute a significant improvement over the previous law. The problems inherent in the new law are discussed from a conceptual perspective in the third section, and research findings that corroborate our arguments are presented in the fourth section. In the last section, the general implications of the findings are addressed in the context of the search for pluralistic , democratic institutional designs. THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM IN ISRAEL BEFORE 1996 The electoral law practiced in Israel from 1951 to 1992 was one of the purest forms of proportional rule. The entire Israeli electorate was treated as a single district. The number of seats that each party in the Knesset gained was almost exactly proportional to the number of votes the party obtained in the general elections. The minimum number of votes needed to enter the parliament was one percent of the votes (since 1992, 1.5 percent), a very low threshold of entry compared to similar electoral systems (Taagepera and Shugart 1989, 133-34). One notable effect of this pure form of proportional electoral rule was that the Israeli Knesset was always composed of a multitude of parties entering the Knesset following each general election. In the thirteen elections held between 1949-1992, no party ever obtained a majority of the seats in the Knesset. This required the largest party in the Knesset to enter a bargaining process of coalition formation after every electoral campaign in order to form a new government. Coalition formation in multiparty systems involves a tedious, often lengthy bargaining process over two types of payoffs: office-related payoffs -the allocation of government portfolios-and policy-related payoffs that involve agreements over the policies that the coalition is to pursue after it secures the vote of investiture in the Knesset and becomes the authoritative government (Laver and Schofield 1990; Sened 1996). A central concern in the research on coalition formation is the stability of coalitions. In multiparty systems with a multitude of parties in parliament, the coalition-forming party must strike a necessarily fragile balance between office-related and policy-related payoffs. Parties in multiparty systems rarely agree on the specific policy that the government should pursue. Most multiparty systems in Western democracies are characterized by ideological cleavages reflecting significant disagreements over government policies in the pertinent political issues. Since the government can pursue only one, single policy, such policy rarely satisfies all the partners in the ruling coalition. The coalitionforming party must win the support of its smaller partners. Attractive ortfoHos are allocated to them in order to com Jensate their dissatis- [54.210.126.232] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:35 GMT) The Bias ofPluralism 271 faction with policies that the government as a whole decides to pursue. In dynamic political systems, governments must frequently adjust their policies in response to changes in the environments within which they operate and changes in public opinion. Such policy adjustments often lead to the breakdown of coalition governments, particulary...