Reuven Y. Hazan’s research while affiliated with Hebrew University of Jerusalem and other places

In the February 2009 elections, the Israeli voter apparently swung to the right. Electoral change can be summed up as a net shift of 15 seats out of 120 towards the right‐religious bloc. While Kadima won the most seats as an individual party, when counted together with the five other left‐of‐centre parties, the left had only 55 seats in total. Likud on the other hand came in a close second in terms of seats won as an individual party, but counted together with the five religious and right‐wing parties they controlled a majority bloc of 65 seats. To this we must add the shift of control of the pivotal position to the right, from Kadima to Likud. These are the reasons why Netanyahu and his Likud party—who won one seat less than Kadima—formed the new coalition government.

Terrorism and anti-terrorist policies are not recent phenomena in Israel. The state's foundation was followed by six decades of terrorist attacks, and the responses of successive governments and the Knesset have evolved over time. Legislative oversight of the executive's anti-terrorist policies was essentially non-existent until the 1980s, almost half Israel's history. Since then, MKs have enhanced their institution's oversight capabilities, exhibiting greater effectiveness and accountability. The evidence of Israel's experience provided by this article suggests that the legislature will, in time, assert oversight powers in a protracted, low-intensity conflict. Legislative assertiveness, however, is necessarily a slow and developing process, and does not lead inevitably to a balance of power between the executive and legislature. The executive may remain dominant, but the Israeli case demonstrates that with time oversight empowerment of the legislature is possible, even in the realm of combating terrorism. The article also demonstrates the impact of other institutions, notably the judicial branch, and stresses that in any democracy engaged in a war of attrition the influence of the public cannot be ignored.

If the quality of democracy incorporates values beyond simple majority choice, then is intra-party democracy likely to further or to impede the advancement of these other values? We address the relationship between internal party democracy, as indicated by the inclusiveness of parties' selectorates, and the realization of two associated democratic values - the extent of both competition in the nomination process and representation among the lists of candidates that emerge. Although we analyse these relationships within party, our interest in them is primarily for their system level impact. We find that the three democratic values of inclusive participation, competition and representativeness are unlikely to be simultaneously maximized. Rather, the relationships among these values may be non-linear, or even negative. In particular, the parties that are most internally democratic produce lists of candidates that are least representative and experience only medium levels of competition.

In a recent study it has been argued that strong centre parties may lead to polarization, not moderation. The study showed that as the centre's share of parliamentary seats increased, this convergence of voters was off-set by two concurrent divergent party trends. As the centre parties expanded, either: (i) the extremist parties increased as well, or (ii) an outward movement of moderate parties took place. This article sets out to test these two trends in order to assess which is the more valid according to two case studies, because each pattern has a different impact on electoral competition, governmental durability and democratic stability. The two trends are appraised in Denmark and The Netherlands for all post-war elections until 1990. The results show that the centre is indeed related to systemic polarization, but that one of the two patterns is invalid. The trend that perceives the centre as a possible destructive force is not supported, while the tendency that does not jeopardize democracy is supported. In both countries the centre's potential coalition partners - the parties on the moderate left and right - attacked their centre-based party system by pulling away in an outward polarizing pattern. The goal was the creation of a bipolar system, with a vacant centre. In each case the centre parties were of a different size and adopted different tactics in order to combat the “moderate-induced” strategy of polarization. The centre's counter-strategies succeeded, but the party systems were transformed.

This article focuses on an external institution that moulds the internal composition of legislatures and influences the behaviour of its members – the candidate selection method. More specifically, different candidate selection methods place different institutional constraints on legislators. Legislative performance is, therefore, directly influenced by particular factors in the candidate selection method. The first section of this article explains what candidate selection methods are, and why this institution is important for the study of politics in general and legislative politics in particular. The second section presents the main distinctive factor in candidate selection methods, the selectorate. The third section suggests hypotheses regarding the impact of this central element in candidate selection methods on the makeup of legislatures and the behaviour of legislators. The fourth section proposes a methodology for implementing the new perspective suggested here by offering various measurements for assessing the legislative consequences of candidate selection methods. The final section presents the empirical data that are available.

Electoral systems at the national level and candidate selection methods at the party level are connected, maybe not causally but they do influence each other. More precisely, the electoral system constrains and conditions the parties' menu of choices concerning candidate selection. Moreover, in light of this relationship, when a country reforms its electoral system, there will be consequences for the parties' candidate selection methods. This article outlines the possible connection between electoral systems and candidate selection. It elaborates the main dimensions for analyzing candidate selection methods, focusing on inclusiveness and decentralization, delineates their variation across representative democracies and describes their determinants. The current situation regarding candidate selection within the Dutch political parties receives special attention, as do the possible ramifications on Dutch politics in light of shifts in candidate selection that might come about as a result of alternative electoral reforms. The Netherlands is currently debating several possible electoral reforms. Other than maintaining its present electoral system, the three possible reforms all include increasing aspects of more candidate-centered electoral systems. If any of these three is adopted, the resulting shifts in candidate selection will impact party unity on a scale from moderate to significant.Acta Politica (2006) 41, 146–162. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500153

Israel had a closed list PR system that was so proportional that it resulted in a large multiparty system with a very fragmented parliament. One result is that for decades, Israel experienced difficulties in building and maintaining large coalition governments, often containing several small and more extreme parties, which can and do yield blackmail powers. The failure to reform the actual electoral system led to misguided attempts at institutional engineering. Reformers attempted to alleviate some of the effects of the electoral system by adopting party primaries and directly electing the prime minister. However, the unintended consequences of these reforms were immediate. Primaries undermined party discipline, while the direct election of the Prime Minister made the problem of sustaining coalition governments worse than before the reform. Israel has since returned to a 'single-ballot' system.