From a Top-Down to a Bottom-Up Approach to Legislative Oversight

Over the years there have been several studies of oversight in the context of the US Congress; much less attention, however, has been paid to the study of oversight in parliamentary systems. Comparative studies spearheaded by several international organisations in recent years offer a different perspective of legislative oversight. They emphasise a new concept, oversight potential, and suggest that strengthening this potential would help promote good governance, fight corruption and improve democracy. This study examines the concept of oversight potential in a pure parliamentary system – the Israeli Knesset. It shows that low potential impairs actual oversight in a parliamentary system that uses mainly police-patrol techniques as defined by the 1987 work of McCubbins and Schwartz. It suggests that increasing oversight potential will help improve the oversight outputs of the legislature. Finally, it develops a bottom-up legislative approach for measuring oversight potential, and by doing so it enriches this neglected field of research.     

The 1999 Knesset and prime ministerial elections in Israel

This election note delineates the outcome of the 1999 elections in Israel, in which the Prime Minister was directly elected — for only the second time — concurrently with the parliamentary election. It then analyzes the election results produced by Israel's unique electoral system, and assesses their immediate ramifications.     

Vehicles of opposition influence or agents of the governing majority? Legislative committees and private members’ bills in the Hungarian Országgyűlés and the Israeli Knesset

ABSTRACT

In this article, we assess the role and the strength of the legislative committee system of two legislatures: the Hungarian Országgy?lés and the Israeli Knesset, by looking at the fate of private member bills over the past four legislative cycles (1998–2014 in Hungary and 2006–2019 in Israel). We find that Israeli committees allow opposition PMBs to succeed at a significantly higher rate than Hungarian committees do, even though the formal properties of the two committee systems are very similar: during the examined period, more than one-fifth of the laws that were passed by the Knesset were initiated as opposition sponsored PMB, whereas the corresponding number in the Országgy?lés was only one per cent. The central reason for this unexpected divergence in the success rate of opposition sponsored PMBs, in spite of a favourable institutional setting shared by the committee systems of the two parliaments, may lie in the different degrees of party concentration in the two legislative party systems.     

Agenda Control in the Israeli Knesset during Ariel Sharon's Second Government

How do multi-party coalition governments share agenda power? In principle, coalitions might allocate agenda power among their members by distributing special proposal rights, distributing special blocking rights, or both. The literature has prominent models embodying each polar possibility, with Laver and Shepsle's model envisaging that each party in a coalition has the ability to propose any bill(s) it wishes within the jurisdiction of a ministry it controls; and Cox and McCubbins' cartel theory envisaging that each party has the ability to block bills, thus necessitating collective bargaining over the overall agenda. This paper shows that agenda-setting in Israel is not consistent with the ‘ministerial dictatorship’ version of the Laver–Shepsle model but is consistent with the Cox–McCubbins model.     

Defining the Job of the Member of the Knesset

In Israel, as in other democracies, there is no comprehensive definition of the job of its parliamentarians. This article explores the refusal to provide a comprehensive definition of the job, and the reasons why such a definition ought to be considered, both in Israel and elsewhere, even if the chances of doing so are slim. With regard to Israel, the main reason why a definition of the job of Knesset members (MKs) is required is related first and foremost to three provisions of the Knesset Members’ Immunity, Rights and Duties Law of 1951. The issue of remuneration for MKs and the problem of mistrust in the Knesset are additional reasons. The article explores those elements of the job that have nevertheless been defined in Israel in a piecemeal fashion – both in terms of what the job excludes and what it includes. Some of these partial definitions appear in laws, the Knesset Rules of Procedure, and the Rules of Ethics for Members of the Knesset. However, the most significant definitions have been provided within the framework of verdicts of the High Court of Justice, which has on occasion been called upon to deal with various issues connected with MKs’ rights and immunities.