In Israel, the ministers who form the executive branch are elected members of the Knesset. They obtain their positions as part of the horse-trading process that goes into forming a governing coalition. For instance, the outgoing health minister Yaakov Litzman, who received much criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, was appointed not because of any special expertise or interest in public health, but because he demanded the post in exchange for bringing his United Torah Judaism party into the coalition.
Underneath each minister is a director general, usually a career civil servant, who often does much to shape and implement policy. Haviv Rettig Gur explains how recent events have demonstrated both the weaknesses and the strengths of this system:
The Israeli right often complains about the country’s “governability” problem—the way elected leaders often find themselves straitjacketed by over-powerful (and leftist, the complaint goes) bureaucrats and unable to enact right-wing policies. It’s a constant refrain that even played a central part in Likud’s 2015 election campaign.
But the coronavirus crisis and the past year and a half of political deadlock, from the fall of the 34th government in December 2018 to the formation of the 35th on May 17, 2020, have led some, including on the right, to rethink the sources of the problem. Whether it was the health minister, then-Finance Minister Moshe Kaḥlon, the absentee agriculture minister (a position held by four different people since November), or any number of other vital cabinet posts, the unprecedented events of the past eighteen months have showcased for Israelis the fecklessness and irresponsibility of much of their elected leadership and the importance of the technocrats really running the show behind the scenes.
The ministers Israelis needed most were busy avoiding the hard decisions and responsibilities in the midst of a dire national emergency—and it was the much-maligned bureaucrats who stepped quietly into the breach and delivered coherent policies to deal with the crisis.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/who-runs-israel-a-year-of-deadlock-and-pandemic-shows-its-not-the-ministers/