Oracles and the paliamentray system
As the Israeli election is approaching, I thought I should publish some of the posts that have been sitting in my drafts for a while now. For example, I wrote this post over a month ago, but haven’t had a chance to publish it yet. Interestingly, even though it is over a month old, I think it is still relevant. The only thing I changed was adding a reference to Michal Shamir at the end.
Please let me know what you think about this.
Reading the Israeli press in the last month or so made an impression that the news media today are more focused on covering the future, rather than on reporting news. For example, according to Gid’on Levi (HE) the Israeli election is already decided and Netanyahu is going to take the election with ease. Udi Lebel, criticized the growing intervention of army officials in political processes by suggesting that Israeli should negotiate with Syria. He opened his article with a claim that we are facing a new government with a Prime Minister (PM) who opposes such talks (HE).
These sentiments are supported by some polling data (HE), which shows that if the election would happen then (Nov, 20), Likud would have 32 seats in Knesset (6 more from the previous poll), Kadima would have 26 seats (3 less than before), and Avoda would practically disappear with only 8 seats (3 seats less than in the previous poll). Although the data has slightly changed since then, the trends remain.
In fact, reading these articles and then the comments people leave as a response to them, definitely gives one a sense that this election is over, even before the parties have gone through the primaries. I think it shows one of the greater weaknesses of the Israeli version of the parliamentary system (HE). People seem to form their voting inclinations based on the person aiming for the PM post. As if this person is going to have exclusive governing powers and the entire policy of the future government will be up to this person. In reality, however, the PM has a lot, but not at all ultimate powers. Because of the way the parliamentary system works in Israel, the PM is a hostage. First of all, they are a hostage of their own party, and then of the other parties joining the coalition.
Right now, the dynamics of this campaign have been very personal. It is definitely Zipi vs. Bibi as the “Economist” put it. All the people who joined/left the major parties were nothing more than markers of the qualities of the candidates. The more people (or should I say celebrities) have joined a certain party, the more credentials they are supposedly provide to the person heading that party. It seems like neither the voters, nor the press, are paying attention to the individual admissions and ideological approaches of the newcomers and those who decided to change political affiliations. Yet, once the election hype is over, these individual characteristics of people on each candidate’s list will become extremely important both for the political direction Israel is going to take and for the stability of the next government.
The last argument takes me back to the media and to the role of Oracles they have taken upon themselves. Reading the predictions, I cannot help myself but seeing all good spiral of silence, agenda setting, framing, and a handful of other theoretical approaches playing off in front of my eyes. I wonder to what degree focusing on the leaders of the parties and on the prediction contributes to making this prediction eventually come true? I wonder if there is going to be any change in discourse once the primaries are over? Will the actual teams matter in public discourse of these election?
One thing that becomes clearer and clearer to me is that the current version of the parialmentary system in Israel is not neccesarily the most productive model of government (and I am not alone – HE). At the same time, it looks like changing this model may be difficult, to impossible, because the change is supposed to come from within the same milfancionting apparatus. In one of the recent analysis of the voting patterns of the Israeli voters (HE), Prof. Michal Shamir expressed some optimism that at some point Israel can get its own Obama (I guess referring to the inspiration, enthusiasm, and hope his campaign and the begining of his presidency gave to the american people). I would love to hope that she is right, but observing the election dynamics makes me more sceptical that the current system can produce a person who would will be free of its, not neccesarily healthy, influence.
