Israeli Parlamentarism in XXI Century: Electorial Failure or System Crises?

Abstract

Just within three years Israel experienced four consecutive Knesset electoral campaigns (in April and September 2019; March 2020 and March 2021). However, neither leader of the permanently ruling since 2009 center-right Likud party Benjamin Netanyahu, no his electoral opponents were able to form in any way stable coalition Government. In fact the electoral campaign during this period due to the uncompromised rivalry between the major party blocs never terminated. In March 2021, at last, the anti-Netanyahu bloc managed to win electionsand form the coalition government. Such situation that hardly had any precedent in Israeli political history, as well as the obvious deadlock that Israeli political system appeared poses several questions that yet to find their comprehensive answer in the academic literature. Do we deal with a situational political "glitch", which - exactly as it had happened in the past, could be resolved at some point? Or, on the contrary, do we observe here the systematic crises of the party and political system of this country, which basic foundations were constructed long before the declaration of the State of Israel itself? Finally, considering similar political trends in other Western countries, could we talk about the general crises of the European-style parliamentary democracy model, the one that during the past centuries was believed to be the optimal political structure framework for modern and contemporary ethnic national and civic national states? While analyzing the Israeli experience the authors of this article intend to answer a part of these and related questions.