This week will see two developments in our allies.

First, in Israel, we are still in the post-election negotiation phase.  Because the U.S. has an entrenched two-party system, we rarely see this type of negotiation phase (although we saw something of it in the Senate this cycle).  Israel uses a proportional representation system with a relatively low threshold.  And that means that you have a lot of smaller parties with a handful of seats that have to be meshed together into a coalition.  Over the past three years, there have been four elections with no conclusive results.  Part of the reason for the lack of a conclusive result is that Arabs within the borders of Israel form a significant part of the vote (around 8-10%).  There are certain parties that appeal only to the “Arab vote” and the rest of the parties really only seek the “Jewish vote.”  And the Arab parties are unwilling to form a coalition with the Jewish parties and vice versa.  The result is that a coalition needs 61 out of approximately 110 seats rather than 61 out of 120 seats.  Under the Israeli system, shortly after the election, the President gives a mandate to one of the party leaders to attempt to form a coalition.  That mandate lasts thirty days (but the President can give a second chance if the President believes that the additional time will be useful).  After the last election, Prime Minister/accused criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party had the most seats, and the President gave Netanyahu the first shot at forming the coalition.  Netanyahu’s thirty days ends this week.  It does not look like he will get an extension.  The major opposition parties appear unwilling to form a unity government this time.  (The attempt at a unity government after the previous election quickly fell apart forcing a new election.)  The issue is whether we will be looking at election number five or the President will give the opposition a chance.

Second, in the United Kingdom, we will have local elections on Thursday.  There are two things going on.  In England, local elections occur in May.  While local governments have some powers, a strong recurring theme of local elections is a chance to punish the central government over dissatisfaction with the government.  The governing party typically loses local council seats in the May elections.  In Wales and Scotland, this May is election for their assembly/parliaments.

Both Scotland and Wales use the mixed-member system.  In the mixed member system, voters cast two ballots.  In one ballot, the voters elect a member to represent their constituency.  In the other ballot, the voters pick a party.  This second ballot is used to elect members from a party list for a region.  The members from the region are elected under proportional representation with a twist.  The proportional representation is applied to the total representation from the region — both the members elected from a constituency and the members elected from the party list.  One of the problems with the mixed member system is that a party that does well in the constituency elections in a region can win more seats from the constituencies than they would get through proportional representation.  In Germany (which uses the same system), the solution is that the other parties still get the same total number of seats that they would have gotten in a pure proportional representation system and the additional seats that any party (typically the top party) got due to its success in the individual districts/constituencies are “add-on” seats which increase that regions representation in parliament (at the expense of other regions).  In Scotland and Wales, that just means fewer seats available to the other parties.

To use Scotland as an example, most regions have sixteen total seats.  If the leading party got just over one-third of the vote, it would be entitled to approximately six  seats in a proportional representation system with the other parties getting ten seats.   If the top party won eight seats at the consituency level, however, the other parties would split eight seats.

The big issue in Scotland, as it has been in most recent elections, is the relation of Scotland to the central government.  After the 2011 election, the Scottish National Party was able to put forth a referendum on independence which barely failed in 2014.  During the independence referendum, the “union” parties promised changes that would give more power to the governments of Scotland and Wales.  Those promises have not been fully kept.  More significantly, in 2014, the United Kingdom was part of the European Union.  After the 2015 United Kingdom elections, the central government put forth a proposal to withdraw from the European Union which passed in England and Wales but failed in Scotland.  Because England has many more voters than Scotland, the narrow win tor “leave” in England overwhelmed the significant margin in favor of “remain” in Scotland.  Many in Scotland see the decision to leave the European Union as breaching the implicit understanding that Scotland had when it voted on independence in 2014.  So the Scottish Nationalist Party (the current leading party in the Scottish Parliament) and other nationalist parties are running on a platform of a new referendum.  The size of the nationalist majority may determine whether and when they get a new referendum.