Ahead of Knesset elections, each party decides its own list of candidates.
In Israel, the voter has no influence on which individuals will serve in the Knesset; thus, the selection and ranking of candidates by the parties is decisive: candidates ranked high on the party list will almost certainly serve in the next Knesset.
Those placed in a lower, ‘unrealistic’ slot will know for certain that they will not be elected, and those situated somewhere in between will be left on tenterhooks until after the final vote count. Each party can decide on its own mechanism for setting its candidate list, as the law does not interfere in this issue.
Ostensibly, almost every possible system for candidate selection has been used (or is still in use) in Israel. In many parties today, the party leader has sole authority to decide on the list of candidates. There have been – and still are – parties in which the list is set by small party organs such as an “organizing committee.”
There are also parties in which the delegates decide the candidate list, and there are parties that hold ‘primaries,’ in which all dues-paying party members vote to determine the list. There are also certain combinations of these methods, such as primaries with the addition of some slots on the list decided by the party leader.
What we do not have in Israel, or at least are very rare, are multi-stage methods, in which several selection bodies participate in selecting candidates one after the other. For example, a system in which a small party organ filters an initial candidate list and creates a small “pool” of candidates, and then party members rank the candidates in that pool via primaries.
Multi-stage methods can also involve other actors, from the party leader through the party’s central committee or a “party citizens’ assembly” (a gathering that includes ordinary party members chosen at random), to open primaries.
We do not need to invent the wheel, as such methods are practiced in many democracies around the world – including the UK and many Continental European democracies. They have multiple benefits and mitigate some of the disadvantages of existing methods.
For example, while it is difficult to argue against the democratic value of the broad participation inherent in the primary system, it is also hard to ignore its considerable flaws, which include vote-mongering, corruption, and the encouragement of populist and polarizing behavior. A method in which candidates undergo initial screening may moderate these tendencies.
In fact, any system in which candidate selection depends on only one electorate suffers from characteristic disorders. Past experience in Israel has made very clear the harms resulting from the selection of candidates by a party central committee, and, as noted, the harms caused by selection via primaries, but complete dependence on other electoral bodies can also inflict considerable damage.
Open primaries where voters do not need to be members of the party, for example, may lead to a hostile takeover of the party by foreign elements, while total control by the leader can result in blind loyalty among elected party representatives.
The only way to neutralize these flaws, at least partially, is for each candidate to be dependent on several different selection bodies. This can be seen as a form of intra-party checks and balances.
Future of the political system
In the method proposed above, for example, candidates will know that on the one hand, they must appeal to a broad public, otherwise they will not be selected in the primaries; and at the same time, they must not harm the party or embarrass it in the process, otherwise they will not pass the initial screening of the candidates.
True, shifting to such multi-stage methods contradicts the personal interests of existing actors. For example, voting for “contractors” who have great influence in the primaries and, of course, the leaders of certain parties who have complete control over the list of candidates.
And even if such methods strengthen the parties in the long term, it is impossible to guarantee that they will benefit them electorally in the short term.
But from the perspective of Israeli democracy, the existing methods of selecting party candidates entail clear harms, such as populism on the one hand and excessive concentration of power in the hands of the party leader on the other.
The selection of worthy, higher-quality Knesset members is critical for the future of the political system and the state, and this begins with candidate selection within the parties.
Moreover, introducing a system that involves several party actors in major party events, such as the selection of candidates, would also lead to a revival of Israel’s political parties.
Decentralization of the selection process would not only distribute political power more widely throughout each party; instead, it would also breathe life into the party as a political subsystem in its own right.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.