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among the two smaller coalition partners (i.e., the Greens and the
FDP). Reactions to Russia’s war on Ukraine led to visible conflict,
when individual MPs from within the majority publicly posi-
tioned themselves against their PPGs’positions and the chan-
cellor. The heat thus further intensified.
For the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in the opposition
for the first time in 16 years, it took time until it had “dusted itself
off.”After narrowly losing the 2021 election, the party settled on
new leadership and positioned itself in conflict mode—but nev-
ertheless it occasionally cooperated with the majority. This was a
significant difference from the ongoing collaboration of previous
years, when the major parties (i.e., the CDU/Christian Social
Union and the SPD) had governed jointly in grand coalitions
for 12 years.
One piece of legislation had significant effects. In 2023, Parlia-
ment passed a reform of the electoral law, effectively limiting the
size of Parliament to 630 members. Currently, the Bundestag has
more than 730 members, making it the largest parliament in the
world. Despite attempts in recent years, it had not been possible to
pass this reform in the mode of “cold politics”—that is, through
compromise and consensus between the majority and the oppo-
sition. Politics surrounding this change in the German polity was
intense; members of the opposition decried foul play: “a manipu-
lation of electoral law”and “an attack on democracy itself”
(Siefken 2024). When the Constitutional Court decided in July
2024 that most of the rules indeed were constitutional (some
adjustments were required), attention to this issue subsided.
Beyond circles of those politically interested, there had not been
much previous awareness in German society either. However, this
certainly had an effect on the atmosphere inside Parliament as a
toxic issue.
Stability in Institutions, Instability in Political Behavior
Overall, the German political system has strong institutional
stability. Parliament is working and accomplishing things in its
usual routines: 250 laws were passed at the halfway point of the
electoral period, which is the typical number. Parliamentary
questions are asked and answered at high rates, and plenary
debates are held at the usual intervals. An intermediate external
evaluation revealed that the coalition contract was well on its
way to being largely fulfilled, as in past years (Vehrkamp and
Matthieß 2023).
In the meantime, visible conflicts have arisen for three reasons:
parliamentary presence and actions of the right-wing AfD, the new
strategic approach of the opposition, and internal conflicts in the
coalition. The breakdown of the coalition in November 2024 led to
early general elections in February 2025, intensifying conflict in a
contested electoral campaign. In a political culture that values
compromise and is based on competition toward the center, these
conflicts work against trust in political actors. They can have
reverberations on the political system.
To summarize, the parliamentary situation and the political
perceptions in Germany currently are driven by various changes in
German politics. We observe “hot politics”in a system that values
“cold politics.”This is good news because politics—that is, the
style of getting things done—can be changed most easily by the
political actors. The question is: Do they have the incentives,
intentions, and capacities to do so?
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The author declares that there are no ethical issues or conflicts of
interest in this research. ▪
REFERENCES
Decker, Frank. 2021. “Bürgerr¨
ate: Abhilfe gegen die Repr¨
asentationskrise oder
demokratiepolitischesFeigenblatt?“In Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 51 (1): 125–40.
Lijphart, Arend. 1984. Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus
Government in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sartori, Giovanni. 2005/1976. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis.
Colchester, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Siefken, Sven T. 2022a. “No Paradise of Policy-Making: The Role of Parliamentary
Committees in the German Bundestag.”In Parliamentary Committees in the Policy
Process, ed. Sven T. Siefken and Hilmar Rommetvedt, 116–36. London: Routledge.
Siefken, Sven T. 2022b. “Continuing Formalization of Coalition Formation with a
New Sound: Negotiating the Coalition Contract after the 2021 Bundestag
Election.”German Politics and Society 40 (2): 90–109.
Siefken, Sven T. 2023. “The Bundestag in the Pandemic Year 2020 to 2021: Continuity
and Challenges in the COVID-19 Crisis.”German Politics 32 (4): 664–85.
Siefken, Sven T. 2024. “Electoral Reform in Germany: An End to a Never-Ending Story?”
Washington, DC: American-German Institute. https://
americangerman.institute/2024/08/electoral-reform-in-germany.
Vehrkamp, Robert, and Theres Matthieß. 2023. Mehr Koalition wagen: Halbzeitbilanz
der Ampel-Koalition zur Umsetzung des Koalitionsvertrages 2021. Gütersloh,
Germany: Bertelsmann Stiftung.
LEGISLATIVE–EXECUTIVE RELATIONS IN ISRAEL:
CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS 2023–2024
Osnat Akirav, Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel
DOI:10.1017/S1049096524000532
Israel has a weak parliament that is dominated by the executive
branch (Cohen 2024; Tuttnauer and Hazan 2023). The judiciary is
independent and strong, and it plays an important role in balan-
cing the weak parliament and the strong executive branch (Roznai
2024; Zamir 2021). Between 2019 and 2024, Israel’s legislative–
executive dynamics changed dramatically (Akirav 2024; Roznai
2024). Four factors led to this change: the indictment of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, overlapping crises, political polar-
ization, and populist rhetoric. This Spotlight article focuses on
how Netanyahu’s indictments changed the legislative–executive
relationship, specifically after October 7, 2023.
The Indictments Against Prime Minister Netanyahu
In February 2019, for the first time in the history of Israel, the
attorney general announced the filing of an indictment for
crimes of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust against an incumbent
prime minister. Because Netanyahu was unable to form a
We observe current “hot politics”in a system that values “cold politics.”
PS •January 2025 111
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
government after the April 2019 election, he convinced his
coalition partners to vote to dissolve the 21st Knesset and hold
new elections. This also occurred after the election of September
2019. The main issue that dominated the second election was
whether it was appropriate for a candidate for the prime minister
position to be facing indictments. The third election in March
2020 resulted in the establishment of an emergency government
due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fourth election took place in
March 2021, resulting in Netanyahu spending a year as the leader
of the opposition, a role he strongly disliked. After the 2022
election, Netanyahu formed the most extreme government in
Israel’s history, including parties from the right wing, the
extreme right wing, and the ultra-Orthodox. The coalition agree-
ment of this government included numerous policy-specific
procedural rules that enabled these previously marginalized
parties to fulfill their extremist goals in Israeli politics. The
government’s majority rule (i.e., 64 of 120 seats) transformed
into the tyranny of the majority, leading to further oppression of
the weaker Knesset and enabling the ultra-Orthodox party and
other extreme right-wing parties to pushforward their extremist
agenda.
In February 2023, a group of coalition Israeli legislators
proposed a private bill to amend the “Basic Law: Government
Regarding the Prime Minister’s Inability to Fulfill His
Position.”To amend the Basic Laws, a simple majority is
required for seven and an absolute majority for six of the laws.
Thus, it is relatively easy for any given government to change
the Basic Laws for its own reasons. The number of amendments
that Israel made in the Basic Laws is higher compared to other
Western democracies.
1
The content of the amendments is an
additional indicator of the weakness of the Israeli parliament
and the ability of the government to set its agenda regarding
significant changes in checks and balances. For example,
in 2014, the government amended “Basic Law: Government
(Vote of No-Confidence)”from semi-constructive to become
fully constructive. Scholars indicated that a fullconstructive
vote of no-confidence is rare in democracies, and it constrains
thepoweroftheoppositiontooverseethegovernment
(Tuttnauer and Hazan 2023).
To accelerate the process of amending the “Basic Law: Gov-
ernment Regarding the Prime Minister’s Inability to Fulfill His
Position,”a special committee was established—it was the second
special committee since the establishment of Israel and both by
the same government. This committee held only eight meetings,
and the amendment passed on the third hearing—less than a
month since it had been tabled. The executive branch prevented a
proper legislative process for amending a Basic Law and avoided
deep and professional committee discussions. The coalition’s
majority in the committee guaranteed its passage. The passage
of the amendment dramatically changed legislative–executive
relations. In its current form, it is almost impossible to declare
that the prime minister is unable to fulfill his position.
In January 2024, the Supreme Court determined that the
amendment to “Basic Law: Government Regarding the Prime
Minister’s Inability to Fulfill His Position”would be in effect only
starting in the next Knesset term because it targeted a particular
individual, which constituted an abuse of the Knesset’s authority.
The weak parliament was unable to stop the dominant executive
branch from promoting a fundamental change in this Basic Law.
The independent Supreme Court did.
Netanyahu’s innocence is one factor that explains the
observed dynamics of the parliament losing power to the exec-
utivebranch.Thefiveconsecutiveelectionsbetween2019and
2022 concerned Netanyahu’s argument that he was innocent
(Navot and Goldshmidt 2022; Oren and Waxman 2022). Scholars
have indicated that the criminal proceedings against Netanyahu
led to an overlap of his personal interest in escaping the law and
the aspiration of the parties that compose the right-wing reli-
giousbloctoreininthecourts(Akirav2024; Navot and Gold-
shmidt 2022).
After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Netanyahu
and his coalition partners prioritized remaining in power. In doing
so, they changed the legislative–executive dynamic. The most
visible evidence of this is the shift in fund allocation to prioritize
the coalition’s interests and the exclusion of ultra-Orthodox men
from military draft. During wartime, a country has two critical
requirements: funding for the military and soldiers. The following
sections examine how the ultra-Orthodox party neglected the
necessity for funding and soldiers and instead prioritized the
interests of its ultra-Orthodox voters.
Coalition Funds
On October 15, 2023, the Ministry of Finance CEO wrote: “The
allocation of budgets that have not yet been allocated and are not
related to supporting the fighting, the affected civilian population,
or the provision of essential services of the economy must be
frozen.”
2
At the beginning of November 2023, Minister of Finance
Bezalel Smotrich (i.e., leader of the National Religious Party)
refused to freeze the coalition funds. The finance committee’s
chair, Moshe Gafni (i.e., leader of the Haredi party United Torah
Judaism) led a vote to approve the use of the coalition funds for the
ultra-Orthodox. The coalition’s majority in the committee guar-
anteed its passage. The government also needed to adjust the 2024
budget. The finance minister broke the law by presenting the bill
16 days later than the Basic Law allowed. He did so to ensure that
he would be able to transfer the ultra-Orthodox parties’coalition
funds to the yeshivas (i.e., traditional Jewish educational institu-
tions).
3
Opposition legislators and non-governmental organizations
filed a petition with the Supreme Court regarding the 2024
budget. Following allegations of a lack of transparency in the
war budget, the Supreme Court judges gave the government
three weeks to explain the level of detail required in the budget
proposal. To convince the ultra-Orthodox legislators to vote in
favor of the 2024 budget, the government approved a proposal to
exclude yeshiva budgets from the mandatory reductions in the
2024 budget that applied to all government ministries to raise
funds to finance the war. The budget for the yeshiva institutions
remainedthesameastheyearbeforeOctober2023.Thus,the
ultra-Orthodox legislators voted in favor of the 2024 budget,
and Netanyahu managed to remove the threat to the stability of
his government. These debates in the finance committee dem-
onstrate how the executive branch did not deliberate or com-
promise during and after hearing the opposition legislators or
professional advisors. Netanyahu and his coalition’spartners
put their personal needs before those of Israeli society in
wartime, and the Supreme Court played a minor role in this
event.
112 PS •January 2025
Politics Spotlight: Dynamics in Legislative–Executive Relations
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Opposition to the Drafting of Young Ultra-Orthodox Men into
the Army
In 2017, the Supreme Court invalidated the two laws that
exempted yeshiva students from military service. Instead of pass-
ing a law requiring equal military service, the government ordered
the Israeli Defense Forces to not draft yeshiva students until
March 31, 2024, bypassing the parliament. On March 26, 2024,
the Supreme Court discussed petitions claiming that the govern-
ment’s decision was illegal. Two days later, the Supreme Court
issued an interim order prohibiting the transfer of funds to those
yeshivas whose students had refused the draft. Once the parlia-
ment was excluded from the process, the independent Supreme
Court balanced the dominant power of the executive branch over
the weak parliament.
Conclusion
Since his indictments in 2019, Netanyahu—with his proxies
(i.e., legislators)—worked hard to change the executive–legisla-
tive relations in Israel to increase the powers of the executive
branch at the expense of the legislative branch. Netanyahu’s
most recent government did not allow the parliament to hold
professional discussions regarding essential issues, including the
budget during wartime and the drafting of yeshiva students. In
some cases, the Supreme Court managed to balance the domi-
nant power of the executive branch over the weak parliament and
did not in other cases. The analysis of the dynamics of the
legislative–executive relations in Israel shows that the power
shifted toward the executive branch during the past five years.
The Supreme Court appears to be the only institution that
currently can limit the power of the executive branch to any
significant degree.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The author declares that there are no ethical issues or conflicts of
interest in this research. ▪
NOTES
1. See https://en.idi.org.il/articles/39441.
2. See www.sponser.co.il/Article.aspx?ArticleId=113545.
3. See www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001469475.
REFERENCES
Akirav, Osnat. 2024. “Democratic Backsliding and the Constitutional Blitz.”European
Politics and Society 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2024.2343903.
Cohen, Erez. 2024. “Political Instability in Israel over the Last Decades: Causes and
Consequences.”Cogent Social Sciences 10 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.20
23.2293316.
Navot, Doron, and Yair, Goldshmidt. 2022. “Netanyahu and the Very Short History of
the ‘Right-Wing Bloc.’” In The Elections in Israel, 2019–2021, ed. Michal Shamir
and Gideon Rahat, 119–38. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Oren, Neta, and Dov Waxman. 2022. “‘King Bibi’and Israeli Illiberalism: Assessing
Democratic Backsliding in Israel during the Second Netanyahu Era (2009–2021).”
Middle East Journal 76 (3): 303–26.
Roznai, Yaniv. 2024. “From the ‘Hungarian Blitz’to the ‘Polish Salami’:The
Judicial Overhaul in Israel as a Populist Project.”Social Science Research
Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4807540.
Tuttnauer, Or, and Reuven Y. Hazan. 2023. “Government–Opposition Relations and
the Vote of No-Confidence.”Political Studies 72 (3): 984–1004. https://doi.
org/10.1177/00323217231168765.
Zamir, Avi. 2021. “An Independent Judiciary: The Israeli Experience with a Mixed
Jurisdiction System.”Regional Law Review 13–24. https://doi.org/10.18485/iup_
rlrc.2021.2.ch1.
RECENT INTRAPARTY DYNAMICS IN THE
PREDOMINANCE OF THE JAPANESE EXECUTIVE BRANCH
UNDER THE KISHIDA ADMINISTRATION
Jisun Park, Okayama University, Japan
DOI:10.1017/S1049096524000672
The Japanese executive branch has the most important role in the
legislation. For example, the National Diet prioritizes govern-
ment bills and typically passes them without amendments. From
2013 to 2023, on average, 93.1% of government bills were passed
within one session and 93.6% were passed without legislative
amendments. However, this practice results primarily from the
governing parties’informal preliminary examination system
(i.e., Jizenshisa). Under this system, the Cabinet can submit bills
to the National Diet only if they are approved by the governing
party. In exchange for this, “backbenchers”(i.e., Members of
Parliament who do not hold a ministerial position) are obligated
to support government proposals. Therefore, to explain the
dynamics of legislative–executive relations in Japan, the intra-
governing party’s policy-making process in the pre-legislative
stage must be discussed.
This article focuses on the backbenchers’regaining their influ-
ence in the policy-formulation process under Prime Minister
Fumio Kishida’s administration, which began in October 2021. I
argue that this recent dynamic was led by Prime Minister Kishi-
da’s limited resources inside his own party; that is, the relatively
weak status of his faction amid policy conflicts within the party.
Consequently, Kishida was forced to compromise with back-
benchers on major policy-making issues within the party. He also
could not wield the Special Organs under the direct supervision of
the President (SOPs)—one of the tools that Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe had used to lead the intraparty policy discussion, with
comparable efficacy.
Under a legislative framework in which the Cabinet cannot
have formal involvement in the legislative process and faces a
strong Upper House—which the prime minister cannot dissolve
—the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government institutional-
ized the governing parties’Jizenshisa (Kawato 2005). Under this
Since his indictments in 2019, Netanyahu—with his proxies (i.e., legislators)—worked hard
to change the executive–legislative relations in Israel to increase the powers of the
executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch.
PS •January 2025 113
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