On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 00:13, William Sherwin wrote:
So, please tell me, though this is off-topic: if elections were to be held in Israel in which two parties split the vote evenly - 60 Knesset seats for each - and the sides were unwilling to cooperate, how would the government be determined?
May that scenario never happen...
In USA, most of the electors are bound not to change their votes. In Israel, there is rich tradition of "Calentarism". This included a political party, all of whose MPs were "Calentars" except for the founder (Raful Eitan).
So if a tie ever happened, then a MP would desert his party by declaring
neutrality, which in effect means his support for the opposite party. Other MPs would threaten but persuaded not to carry out their threats to
desert their party. The net result is that the balances would tip in
favor of one side.
This is not a good analogy at all.
In the USA, Electors are elected for the sole purpose of going to the Electoral College, convening once, and casting their vote for the President and Vice-President.
The Electoral College has not effect on anything that happens during the President's term. There are cases where the decision would be handed over to Congress, but again, this is a one time decision.
Once a President is elected Congress cannot replace the President, and has no effect on the makeup of the President's cabinet, except in extreme cases.
The Israeli system is a parliamentary system where the government needs the parlimanet's support continously, or at least, it needs to make sure the opposition does not gain a majority.
There is basis for comparison, and certainly not between the Knesset and the Electoral College.
>>So, please tell me, though this is off-topic: if elections were >>to be held in Israel in which two parties split the vote evenly >>- 60 Knesset seats for each - and the sides were unwilling to >>cooperate, how would the government be determined?
First, I don't think we'll ever change to a two party system
The process of setting up the coalition in the first place is that following the elections representatives of all parties with elected MKs go to the President (in Israel, a titular head of state) and tell him which MK(usually the head of one of the big parties) gets their support as Prime Minister, the President then gives that MK the job of trying to setup a coalition. If the first MK to get the assignment fails, then the President needs to hand the assignment over to another MK.
In the 80s there was one case where the MK support in that first stage split evenly. The then President decided to give the mandate to form a coalition government to the side whose 60 MKs represented more individual votes. This was a judgement call that would have no effect on the actual support any such coalition would get eventually inthe Knesset.
IIRC that was in 84, and they eventually formed the rotation unity govt.
> So if a tie ever happened, then a MP would desert his party by declaring
> neutrality, which in effect means his support for the opposite party.
> Other MPs would threaten but persuaded not to carry out their threats to
> desert their party. The net result is that the balances would tip in
> favor of one side.
Under the current law this wouldn't work. You actually need the 61 MK majority. Additionaly, you need a 61 majority for a non-confidence vote to be successful, and an alternative candidate for MP who has the support of 61 MK.
If such an impasse occured, either eventually someone would budge, and in a multi-party system this would happen, or they would agree on the one thing they can agree to - new elections. If a new Knesset can't form a govt within a certain amount of time, they're required to disperse and have new elections.
--- Omer
-- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net
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