Backgrounder: Playing the Numbers Game

I'm doing what I suspect most Israelis are doing right now, playing with the preliminary numbers and trying to figure out what a coalition would look like. Bearing in mind that the prelminary results are from exit polling and that since military encampments aren't exit-polled, the soldiers' vote might alter the trends slightly, let's assume for argument's sake that these exit poll numbers hold more or less true.

One of the pleasures of editing The Middle East Journal has been working working with Don Peretz, who has been analyzing Israeli elections for us since the 1950s and is the author of the classic The Government and Politics of Israel. Don is retired now and doesn't use E-mail much, so I haven't had a chance to talk to him about these results. But maybe reading Don's work all these years has rubbed off on me a little, and I did used to analyze Israeli politics in my newsletter, The Estimate.

The first observation is that the body politic is increasingly fragmented. This has been the trend for some time. Labor no longer dominates the left-center (or much of anything else) and Likud no longer has a monopoly on the secular right. Kadima has managed to hold a narrow lead as the largest party, but Kadima is something of a hybrid itself, made up of ex-Likud and ex-Labor figures, some quite far to the right. While it is seeking to be the long-predicted, but very slow to emerge, centrist party in Israel, it was really created as a vehicle for Ariel Sharon, and with Sharon in a coma the past three years, the party is still struggling for an identity.

The emergence of Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) has raised alarm, especially on the left and among Israeli Arabs. Partly this is due to the sometimes outrageous comments made by its leader, Avigdor Lieberman, a Moldova-born immigrant who has called Israeli Arabs a fifth column. It started as a party for immigrants from the ex-Soviet Union, but its appeal has grown. I suspect one reason for Yisrael Beitenu's strength as well may be that many Israelis on the right would vote Likud but just don't like Binyamin Netanyahu. He has a reputation for abrasiveness.

As I noted, Lieberman's party started out as a party of ex-Soviet immigrants. Israel's electoral system favors the emergence of small parties with highly specialized agendas, such as a party of pensioners or, my personal favorite this time, a party of proponents of marijuana legalization and Holocaust survivors. (Don't believe me? Follow the link.) This list of Israeli parties at Wikipedia gives a sense of the chaotic scene.

The reason for the proliferation of small parties, by the way, is that the threshold to enter the Knesset is only 2% of the vote, which I believe may be the lowest of any democracy of any reasonable size. I think maybe the Netherlands has a similar threshold, but 5% or more is more common in proportional-representation systems. When I was first getting acquainted with Israel back in the 1980s, I naively asked an Israeli colleague, a Laborite who complained about the power of the religious parties, why they didn't just raise the threshold and thus have fewer fringe parties. He was appropriately bemused by the question. The answer, of course, is that the fringe parties control the swing votes necessary to change the electoral law, and they like things just as they are, thank you very much. All the major parties criticize the present system from time to time, especially because the smaller parties and the religious bloc in particular bargain hard and make many demands before joining a coalition. Both Livni and her Kadima ally, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, have called for reforming the political system just today. Don't hold your breath: the little parties will be presenting their demands in the next days and weeks.

So, back to the numbers game. Both Tzipi Livni and Netanyahu have said they would like to form a unity government or at least a centrist coalition including Likud, Labor, Kadima and Yisrael Beitenu, though in the latter case there is the question of what post Lieberman could hold without international alarm: Netanyahu has already promised not to to make Lieberman Defense Minister. It's difficult to imagine such an undiplomatic figure in the Foreign Ministry. But he heads the third biggest party, and if it joins the coalition he's going to want a major job.

The first question is who will be given the first chance to form a government. In an earlier post today I linked to a Jerusalem Post article on the dilemma facing Israeli President Shimon Peres. The post of President of Israel is mostly a ceremonial one, but it does have one major prerogative: entrusting a potential Prime Minister to form a goverment. Traditionally, the head of the party that wins the most seats gets the first chance. But the President is supposed to consult with the various parties in the Knesset and then entrust the task to the person with the likeliest chance of forming a coalition, and Likud is already insisting that Netanyahu has the math on his side.

It is indeed much easier to put together a 61-seat majority on the right-hand side of the ledger rather than the left. (And complicating matters on the left is a traditional taboo, violated only rarely and for short periods, on having a coalition dependent on the votes of "non-Zionist" parties, meaning the Communists and the Arab parties.)

For example, a hard right coalition of Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, National Union (which is even farther to the right) and the religious parties would come close to the total even without Kadima or Labor. It's much harder for Livni to form a coalition without including Likud, which she has said she would like to include. But if Peres offers Livni the first chance to form a government, all Likud has to do is decline to join and she probably will fail to get a majority -- which is what happened last year after Ehud Olmert stepped aside.

Whoever is given the first chance to try -- and Livni and Netanyahu are loudly insisting that it must be she/he -- the designee will have 28 days to put together a coalition. The President may extend this an additional 14 days, but if after 42 days the designee hasn't put together a coalition, the President will designate someone else, who gets 28 days. So even if Livni gets the designation, because she won the most seats, all Likud would have to do to stymie her would be to decline to join, and in effect run out the clock. (For a backgrounder on the rather baroque electoral system try this page at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.)

The obvious answer would seem to be a unity government including both Likud and Kadima, which would come within three or four votes of a majority and perhaps need only one other party to form a coalition. But with the numbers so close, it becomes difficult since if Livni is to be PM, Netanyahu may well balk at joining, and vice versa.

Something analagous happened back in the 1980s, when Labor had a narrow lead. Shimon Peres agreed to a rotation system in coalition with Likud; from 1984-86 Peres was Prime Minister and Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir was Foreign Minister; then from 1986-88 they traded places. That was a different era and the two parties were much stronger then; putting something similar together now might be hard.

When the numbers of seats have hardened a bit more we'll do the math again, but it looks like a lot of wheeling and dealing is in store.