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Abstract
Much of the recent academic literature that assesses democracy in Israel labels it either as incomplete or flawed, yet such literature employs minimal systematic analysis of how the state is actually governed. Since the 1990s, there has been a tendency to describe the Israeli political regime as an ethnocracy. This article argues that the term ‘ethnocracy’, when applied to Israel, has certain weaknesses and instead proposes the concept of ‘multicracy’ (multiformocracy) as a more appropriate term by which to describe Israel's political organization. It will demonstrate that existing Israeli democratic institutions do not control the state's policymaking in full and that several politically important processes are controlled or at least influenced by various other politically active forces. Whilst these forces can influence, stimulate, inhibit, and otherwise change governmental decisions and actions, they can be labeled as kratiae. While the capacity of Israel's democracy to govern is weak, these other kratiae can intervene in policymaking and the state's regime acts as democracy-dominated multicracy.
Acknowledgments
The editing of the final version of the manuscript and technical writing support was provided by Paul Wasson (the UK). The author would like to gratefully acknowledge Mordechai Cohen, Orit Rome, Leor Sinai and Rachelle Sevitt for assistance during the research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
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6 Ibid.
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13 Nationality (Amendment No. 2) Law, 5728-1968. Hebrew version: Sefer Ha-Chukkim #538 of 16th August, 1968 (Jerusalem: Government Press, 1968), p.212; English version: Laws of the State of Israel, vol.22: 1967/68 (Jerusalem: Government Press, 1968), pp.241–4.
14 Ibid., English version, p.242.
15 Ibid., English version, p.242.
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