In the Israeli political system, mid-sized and small parties can wield disproportionate power through their ability to walk out of a governing coalition and thereby topple the prime minister, or simply work their will by threatening to walk out. Previous efforts to reduce the clout of smaller parties have failed or backfired. Although the current system doesn’t create the governmental instability often ascribed to it, extortion by junior coalition partners is a real problem, to which Emmanuel Navon suggests a solution:
Israel’s political system suffers less from instability than from a lack of accountability. Members of Knesset (MKs) are not answerable to voters. In parties (such as Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid or Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu) where candidates are selected by the chairman, MKs are only answerable to their boss. In parties that hold primaries (such as Likud and Labor), MKs are answerable to interest groups and to shady deal-makers who determine the results of primary elections. On election day, voters select a party but not their representatives.
In countries where voters chose their parliamentary representatives via electoral districts, such accountability exists. . . . [But] district elections are not a realistic option in Israel: most MKs oppose them and Israel is probably too complicated geographically, demographically, and politically to design electoral districts.
There is another way, however, to make MKs answerable to their voters: by enabling voters to influence the composition of the list they vote for on election day. Instead of just voting for a party, voters can select the candidates they want to promote on the party’s list before casting their ballot. This system, which exists in some twenty democracies around the world, would partially free candidates from the corruption and byzantine deal-making that characterize Israel’s current primaries. Admittedly, this “open-primaries” system tends to give an advantage to famous candidates, but the Internet and social media offer affordable and effective self-promotion tools.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-electoral-reform-netanyahu-should-promote