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Nothing New under the Sun

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

With national elections on the horizon, everyone is talking about reforming Israel’s dysfunctional system of government.

Hence, it may be of interest to note that at a 2008 meeting of the prestigious Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, Professor Yehezkel Dror, a world-renowned Israel Prize Laureate in public policy, declared that Israel must radically change its inept parliamentary system, which failed so miserably during the Second Lebanon War.

Professor Dror thereby affirmed what the present writer has advocated in books, policy papers, public lectures, radio and television programs, and countless articles since 1995—a position now emphasized by the Israel-America Renaissance Institute.

Let me explain Dror’s statement as reported by The Jerusalem Post back in February 2008.

To begin with, what most disturbed Professor Dror is Israel's system of decision making, whose ineptitude is magnified by having a cabinet—meaning an Executive Branch—consisting of five or more political parties each with its own agenda.

Logic as well as experience dictates that Israel must replace this divisive system with a Unitary Executive or Presidential System of Government. Sound familiar?

However, a Unitary Executive or Presidential System of Government requires that the President’s cabinet must consist of ministers who share his political principles and goals and who, in good faith, discuss and promote his public policies.

This logically excludes from the President’s cabinet the leaders of rival parties represented in the Legislature. Sound familiar?

Further, such is the power of a Unitary Executive or Presidential System of Government that it requires, as a check against possible abuses of such power, an Independent and Strong Legislature—whether it is unicameral or bicameral.

Therefore, the members of the Legislature must not be primarily dependent for their office on party machinery but on the voters in geographic-constituency elections. Sound familiar?

Moreover, to replace Israel’s parliamentary system in a simple and effective way necessitates scrapping Proportional Representation, which compels citizens to vote for fixed party slates, many of whose members are not even known to the general public!

To put it more precisely and cautiously, most if not all members of the Legislature should be elected by, and be individually accountable to, the voters—not in a single nationwide electoral district—the present system in Israel—but by the voters in geographically-defined districts.

This, too, must sound familiar to my readers.

But then, nothing is new under the sun.

In the sequel, I will outline the many advantages of a presidential system of government.