The Labor party’s central committee has voted 680-570 to ratify a coalition agreement that party leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak negotiated, against considerable and open dissent from some of his party’s own Knesset members. The party will join the cabinet led by PM-designate Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, along with Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas, and HaBayit HaYehudi.
I am not sure which surprises me more, that Labor is joining what will be an ideologically un-connected government (unless Kadima ultimately relents and signs on as well), or that Labor got such a sweet deal in both portfolio payoffs and policy commitments.
Or, to look at it another way, I am not sure who ultimately was revealed to be more desperate: Barak to avoid leading his diminished party into opposition, or Netanyahu to avoid leading a strictly right-wing/Orthodox government.
Nonetheless, despite what the second-linked item implies, Labor does not look over-represented. It will have 5 ministers. If the cabinet continues to have around 25 ministers, that would be 20%. Labor has 13 Knesset seats, and the coalition will have 66 seats, giving Labor just under 20% of the coalition’s seats. Gamson rules!
Labor will get five very important portfolios and they may indeed come with some policy influence outside of what the party’s size might imply: Defense, Industry, Trade and Labor, Agriculture, Welfare and Social Services and one minister without portfolio who will be in charge of minorities’ affairs. The JPost notes that “The two sides also agreed that Netanyahu would not be the one to appoint Labor ministers to the portfolios, but Barak would do so.” Of course, the notion that a party (through its agent, the leader) and not the head of the government, controls the ministerial posts, is as much a core principle of parliamentary government as is Gamson’s Law.
As for Kadima, this brings me back to another core principle of coalition government: that coalitions tend to be ideologically connected. If Kadima stays in opposition, it is in a really strange and perhaps untenable position. It sits pretty much at the center of the Israeli political spectrum, on each of the main policy dimensions, and yet will have governing parties all around it in the issue space. I have a hard time imagining how a party with such little ideological coherence of its own can survive in that position.
I’m not sure about the last comment. Labor at this point is pretty much an empty shell, and most of the left wing Jewish Israeli electorate in fact voted for Kadima in the last election (the Arabs voted for their own parties or sat out the election).
The logic of the situation should push Kadima to the left, its opposing a clearly right wing government with Labor co-opted and Meretz also a spent force, there is a political vacuum on the Israeli left. What works against this is that Israeli politics as a whole has been moving steadily to the right over the past few years.
Seed planted by Ed — 25 March 2009 @ 15:08
You may be right, Ed.
It is clear that the dynamic of the last campaign already led Kadima (or at least Livni) to move to the left, or at least to be more dovish. (I distinctly recall a comment by Livni about the dove of peace at the window, which I doubt you would have heard Olmert or Sharon ever say.) The party may be in the process of moving towards an outflanking of Labor.
Whether that is sustainable, (1) internally, given the ideological diversity of the Kadima caucus, and (2) feasible with Labor (even if it is a ‘shell’) in government, is hard to say.
It will be a delicate balancing act, for sure. But if this government fails (and it might well, on any number of goals it sets), Kadima might be able to pick up the pieces by being the center-left alternative.
If it pulls that off, it will be interesting to watch, for sure. I am still not sure it can.
Seed planted by MSS — 25 March 2009 @ 16:35
All of this presumes that there will in fact be one Labour party. Am I the only one who expects the anti-coalition faction to leave the party? I hesitate to predict what happens next: Do they form a new party? Join Kadima, or Meretz?
Seed planted by Vasi — 26 March 2009 @ 00:34
I think an actual split is certainly possible. But I have no way to judge whether it is more likely than not.
Seed planted by MSS — 26 March 2009 @ 00:43
–Haaretz, 26 March
Seed planted by MSS — 26 March 2009 @ 17:24
This is going to be another unstable creaky government in Israel unless Kadima joins.
It’s just more of the same. It seems to me that Israeli Party system has fragmented so much so that all of the big parties have to form government with each other.
I guess electoral reform ain’t ever going to happen.
Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 28 March 2009 @ 02:39