SILVIA PASQUETTI

La nuova forma di governo israeliana

N. 185

Summary - In this paper I will focus on the impact of the new basic law on government, adopted in 1992, within the framework of a wider reformist effort.

The leitmotif of the Israeli politics in the Nineties is, in fact, reformism. In the late Eighties, Israel underwent a heavy political crisis characterized by governamental instability, by eccessive power held by minor political parties, especially religious ones, and by a state of wait-and-see policy applied by the political forces that were facing the serious problems that tormented the country.

Failure of attempts to reform the highly proportional electoral system that was adopted for election of parliamentary representatives pushed reformers to take into account an alternative solution: direct election of the Prime Minister.

This reform was introduced by the basic law on government, dated 1992, that abrogated the one dated 1968 and that drastically changed relationships between the legislative and the executive power. It made this change by questioning the very parliamentary character of the Israeli form of government and by projecting the Israeli political system, characterized by a consensus politics for fifty years, towards a model of majority democracy.