A Change Government: Personal or Policy?

Amnon Cavari, Maoz Rosenthal, Ilana Shpaizman

The article was first published at "The Loop"

In June 2021, after 12 consecutive years as Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was forced out of office. How would a coalition's agenda look like when it replaces a government led by such a prominent political leader? Can the new coalition deviate from that leader's heritage? The analysis we offer here examines these questions using a systematic analysis of the new government's coalition agreements and guidelines. The topic we examine is of interest to parliamentary systems led by long-serving prime ministers facing leadership changes, such as Germany in the upcoming post-Merkel era. The topic is also of interest for countries where long-reigning leaders have been promoting democratic erosion to maintain their hold over government, like Hungary's Viktor Orban. Other observers of politics in parliamentary democracies should also be interested in the coalition that replaced Netanyahu: a diverse set of parties belonging to very different party families willing to cooperate to solve a government crisis. This outcome could be relevant for countries facing grave government crises, such as Italy's since January 2021, crises which can be solved by forming similarly unusual coalitions. Before turning to our analysis let us briefly present the Israeli situation.

Some Context
Israel held three national elections between April 2019 and March 2020, which resulted either in interim governments or with a political stalemate 'unity' government. Benjamin Netanyahu led all these governments. During these rounds, Israelis were divided between solid support for Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving Prime Minister, and supporting Netanyahu's removal from power primarily due to corruption allegations against him. The 2021 March elections seemed to result in a political deadlock. However, an unlikely coalition of parties formed Israel's 36th government. For the first time in more than a decade, the Prime Minister is not Benjamin Netanyahu. The new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is a religious Jew—the first in this position to wear a yarmulka. Mr. Bennett is the head of a party that holds only seven (effectively six) seats of the 120 seats in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). Also, for the first time, the coalition includes an independent Arab Party (Ra'am). Furthermore, the new cabinet is the most diverse cabinet in Israel's history: Nine female ministers, two Arab ministers, two openly gay ministers, and a minister with disabilities. A unique feature of this coalition is that it includes parties from diverse party families, including nationalist, liberal, social-democratic, conservative, and ethnic parties.

Our Analysis
To examine whether the new government represents a change in the policy agenda, our research group at the Israeli Policy Agenda Project analyzed the founding documents of the new coalition and government—the coalition agreements and the government guidelines. In entering the coalition, the formateur party (the party forming the coalition) signs an agreement with each party. These dyad agreements include political arrangements (ministerial and other leadership positions), procedural decision-making rules that can constrain the government, and the issue priorities each joining partner wants to promote (or block). Coalition agreements are usually negotiated by party leaders before the government is sworn in and are often ratified within the party. These documents are much more than a symbolic agenda-setting tool, most statements in the agreements are either enacted or implemented through cabinet decisions.

In addition, all parties are asked to sign on the government guidelines. As opposed to the coalition agreements, which may include controversies between coalition partners, the government guidelines include only issues all partners support. These guidelines are presented to the Knesset when the government is sworn in. Existing work demonstrates that the government guidelines serve as a benchmark to assess the initial work of government.
Consistent with the current work of the Policy Agendas Project, we, therefore, coded each quasi sentence in the coalition agreements and the government objectives of the 36th government. For comparison, we relied on our coding of past coalition documents since 1981. In our analysis, we examined the share of policy attention (compared to political arrangements), the diversity of policies, and attention to specific policies. Taken together, an examination of the coalition agreements and the government guidelines of the new and past governments can shed some light on the policy intentions of the incoming government.

The Results
Policy Focus: The coalition agreements of the incoming government maintained a relative balance between political arrangements (60 percent) and policy commitments (40 percent). This balance is very different than the previous government, which mainly focused on political arrangements (75 percent of the agreements).
Policy Variation: The policy attention is not only more extensive but also more diverse. Of the 21 major policy categories we examined, as figure 1 shows the coalition agreements attended to 17. In contrast, the outgoing government attended to only 12. This difference is greater in the government guidelines—19 topics compared to only eight topics in the outgoing government.

Specific issues: The founding documents of the new government demonstrate increased attention to issues that have traditionally been widely sidelined, such as environment and energy, and emphasizes issues that received only limited attention, such as welfare and labor.

State and religion: Among the main conflictual issues in Israeli politics are matters of state and religion. The ultraorthodox parties, who remained outside of government for the first time in 15 years, argue that the new government will change the entire status quo on this issue. We find, however, little support for this concern—less than 10 percent of the coalition agreements address matters of state and religion.

Hence, the difference in the number, diversity of issues, and attention to new issues are important because once issues are on the agenda, the government may address them. This suggests that the new government committed to be a change government, in both political arrangements and the policies it set on its agenda. The real test, however, will be whether it can transform its agenda into actual policies, while surviving in power.

Amnon Cavari (IDC Herzliya),
Maoz Rosenthal (IDC Herzliya),
Ilana Shpaizman (Bar Ilan University)

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