Tag Archives: Israel

International Politics — May 2021 Edition

By tmess2 | Published May 4, 2021

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. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections | Also tagged , , , , , Comments Off on International Politics — May 2021 Edition

International Politics — Trump Ally 1 and Trump Ally 2

By tmess2 | Published December 12, 2019

While folks in D.C. are preparing articles of impeachment, there is election news regarding two of Trumps favorite elected politicians — Bibi Netanyahu and Boris Johnson.

Bibi, like Trump, has been facing investigation for criminal misconduct.  And because Israel permits charges to be filed against a prime minister, he is now actually facing charges.  Meanwhile, Israeli politics are a royal mess.  When there are two or three really strong parties that get most of the votes, proportional representation (or similar systems like the mixed-member system in Germany) can work.  The small parties get to get minor concessions from the major parties, but one of the major parties is typically in a strong enough position to turn to other coalition partners if a potential ally asks for too much.  In Israel, the main parties are simply not strong enough.  Netanyahu’s Likud is only getting around 25% of the vote, leaving them well short of a majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).  And the Labour Party has essentially collapsed leaving centrist politicians to emerge one after the other as the alternative to Likud in new parties that bubble up and then collapse from cycle to cycle.  This past year, that alternative has been the “Blue and White” Party.  But the Blue and White Party has also only gotten around 25% of the vote.  And the remaining parties are too fractured to get enough of them together.  The remaining 50% of the vote is almost split evenly between the religious parties (who want special favors for the ultra-Orthodox), the remnants of Labour and its allies (who want some generally progressive secular government), the right-of-center secular nationalists (who want to repeal the existing special rights of the ultra-Orthodox), and the Arab parties.  This roughly even split means that the natural allies of Likud and Blue and White stood at around 50-52 seats each after the last election.  The secular nationalists could theoretically put either side over the top, but they refuse to sit in a coalition with either the religious parties or the Arab parties (essentially requiring a national unity government as a condition for joining a coalition).

In the April 2019 elections, Likud and Blue and White won 35 seats each (out of 120).  The religious parties combined for 21 seats, leaving a potential Likud-led coalition at 56 seats.  On the other hand, Labour and other progressive parties won a total of 14 seats, leaving a potential Blue and White coalition at 49 seats.  The remaining 15 seats were split between the Arab parties (10 seats) and the secular nationalists (5 seats), meaning that the only way to get to 61 outside of a national unity government would be for the secular nationalist to enter a coalition that either expressly included the religious parties (and the two groups had conflicting demands) or had the implicit support of the Arab parties.  Since neither alternative was acceptable, no government could be formed and we had a second round of elections in September. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections | Also tagged , , Comments Off on International Politics — Trump Ally 1 and Trump Ally 2

International Elections — Summer and Fall 2019

By tmess2 | Published August 10, 2019

With Congress out until Moscow Mitch deigns to call the Senate back to endless debate gun control legislation before ultimately passing the most minimal bill that the Republicans think they can get away with, it’s a good opportunity to talk about the politics of our allies.

The biggest one for domestic politics is probably the Israeli election.  A mere four months ago, Israel went to the polls and Benjamin Netanyahu eked out a narrow victory.  However, given that Israel uses proportional representation, coming in first is not enough to be prime minister.  And many of the groups that would naturally support a Netanyahu government have conflicting non-negotiable demands.  (The big dispute on the Israeli right is between secular and religious parties.  Current Israeli law exempts religious students from the draft.  The religious parties want to keep this exemption.  The secular parties want to repeal this exemption.)  Because he could not put together a majority behind a unified agenda, Israel is going to have a second election on September 17.  Again, like our own President, Netanyahu has to face allegations of improprieties and could likely be facing criminal charges if he loses.  One of the interesting factors in Israeli politics is the use of joint lists in which various parties agree to run as one list to assure meeting the threshold for winning seats (and to maximize the seats won) with internal agreements based on estimated support determining how any seats won are allocated between the parties.  Not much has changed since April so another narrow Netanyahu win is the most likely result.

In Europe, there are a lot of elections set for the smaller economies — Portugal, Poland, Austria, Croatia — but the big question is the United Kingdom.  After the recent Conservative Party elections, Boris Johnson is serving as Prime Minister, but when Parliament returns from the summer recess the Conservatives and their allies from Northern Ireland will have a 320-319 majority.  However, the United Kingdom is currently scheduled to leave the European Union on Halloween.  Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister because Theresa May could not negotiate a deal for the departure that could obtain the consent of Parliament.  While Johnson is trying to negotiate a new deal, the European Union is not willing to negotiate against itself.  It made concessions in the negotiations with Ms. May and is not willing to agree to move the goalposts (especially as the main problem is the Ireland-Northern Ireland border).  There is a solid bloc of the Conservative Party that is opposed to departing without a deal which could lead to Mr. Johnson losing a “no confidence” vote when Parliament reconvenes.  If there is not a consensus alternative to lead a “national unity”government, early elections (but no sooner than October 31) are likely.  Given that the predominant issue in the UK remains the relation between the UK and the European Union (and that the UK is split down the middle on this issue) and the use of a first-past-the-post system (which means the fact that there are multiple parties on both sides of the divide can lead to weird results in individual constituencies). Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections | Also tagged , , Comments Off on International Elections — Summer and Fall 2019

Reckless Incompetence

By tmess2 | Published May 21, 2017

For the past two weeks, almost every day has produced a stunning revelation about the current Administration.  By this point, it is crystal clear that the Liar-in-Chief is completely clueless about the many responsibilities of his job and simply does not care.  He is going to proceed full speed ahead — hoping that determination and arrogance will make up for any deficiencies in his knowledge about policy issues or protocol.

Most democracies have some institutional procedures that keep individuals from rising to the top of the government without sufficient experience in politics and government to assure a basic knowledge of how things work.   In a parliamentary system, the leaders of the major parties tend to have served several terms before becoming leader of their party.  Additionally, the leaders tend to have served on the leadership teams of their parties (having responsibility for several different policy areas including at least one major area) before running for and winning their party’s top spots.  In addition, there are procedures in place that allow a party to remove (albeit with some difficulty) a leader who is not doing a good job as prime minister.

Unfortunately for the U.S., our Constitution predates the modern era of parliamentary democracy.  Our framers did have the same type of concerns that have animated modern parliamentary government, but the development of national politics have undermined the procedures created by the framers.  The electoral college was supposed to assure a minimum level of competence in the presidency.  The thought behind the original language in Article II (two votes per elector, no more than one of which could be from the elector’s state) was that each elector would cast one vote for one of the leading politicians in that state and one vote for a politician with a  national reputation.  Barring a clearly obvious national candidate, no candidate would get a national majority and the House would pick between the top candidates.  This scheme depended upon the framers’ belief that politics would stay state-based and that the different state parties would not get together with similar groups from other states to from a national party that would be able to get electors in multiple states to support a national ticket.  That has left the burden on the parties to devise systems of choosing leaders that ensures competence in their presidential candidates, and — as the current incumbent shows — the Republican Party rules have failed in that regards. Continue Reading...

Posted in Donald Trump, Russia | Also tagged , , , , , , , Comments Off on Reckless Incompetence

Supreme Court and Foreign Policy

By tmess2 | Published June 14, 2015

One of the basic lessons that law students learn in law school is the importance of “framing” an issue.  The “legally correct” result of a case often depends on how the issue is framed.

This past week, the United States Supreme Court decided Zivotsky v. Kerry, a case involving the constitutionality of a 2002 statute requiring the State Department to designate that a person born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel in passports and consular report if that person requested.  In a 5-1-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down this statute.  (The 1 was Justice Thomas who would have struck down the statute with regards to the passport requirement but left it in place for the consular report).

Posted in Judicial | Also tagged , , Comments Off on Supreme Court and Foreign Policy