Parliamentary Democracy and the Fight to Change the Electoral System

Israeli democracy is embodied, for good and for ill, in its parliament, the Knesset, a unicameral legislature of 120 members elected on a national party-proportional basis. As opposed to the United States, Israel has no strict separation of powers between its legislative and executive branches. Instead, the Israeli cabinet (called “government” in Hebrew political terminology), like that of Great Britain, operates as the parliament’s executive body. The cabinet is mostly composed of legislators, is responsible to the Knesset, and must retain its confidence. As in many parliamentary democracies, the Israeli cabinet controls much of the Knesset’s work, and in Ben-Gurion’s