Israel’s Constitutional Crisis Was Really a Demographic Crisis

I wholeheartedly agree with Amiad Cohen and Sagi Barmak’s general thesis that Israel’s legislative branch needs to be restructured; the 2023 political-constitutional crisis revealed that the existing unicameral system no longer serves as an adequate framework. However, while the introduction of an upper chamber would mitigate the problems that led to the crisis, I don’t believe that the senate they envision would, in and by itself, solve it.

In order to evaluate Cohen and Barmak’s solution, we first need to be clear about what the problem is. They frame it as a dilemma between the majoritarian principle of electoral democracy and the need for safeguards for the protection of minority interests—a balancing act that avoids both the right’s fear of “juristocracy” (the rule of unelected judges and bureaucrats) and the left’s fear of tyranny of the majority (democracy defined solely by the majoritarian principle). I believe, however, that this description doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. The main source of the 2023 constitutional crisis was demographic, rather than constitutional, anxiety, and any solution to the crisis must address this demographic dimension head-on.

Let me explain. Israel has one constitutional arrangement on paper and another one in practice. On paper, it is a unicameral parliamentary democracy with proportional representation. In fact, Israel has one of the world’s purest majoritarian systems, because there is no written constitution and no other principle to offset proportional representation: neither geographic representation, nor first-past-the-post elections, nor special Knesset seats reserved for minorities or appointees, nor anything else of the sort. This simple, proportional-majoritarian system would be suitable for an ethnically and culturally homogeneous country, where the major dividing lines are purely political. In such a state, citizens would differ in their economic views and domestic priorities, and take a range of stances on social issues. But they would share a general public ethos, a framework within which these debates take place.