The Quality of Democracy in Israel

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the problems regarding the quality of democracy in Israel, a country considered by renowned nonpartisan organizations like Freedom House as a liberal democratic one. Despite the excellent rating in the advancement of her democracy, there are two crucial features in Israel that deteriorate the quality of the country’s democratic regime. The first one is that the Israeli government distributes resources according to ethnicity rather than nationality. The strong desire of Israel to maintain the status of “Jewish State” has shaped the Israeli society towards “ethnocracy” rather than “democracy”. The second feature has to do with the fact that the security issue has been extremely important in Israeli politics since before the establishment of the state in 1948. Therefore, the Israeli army has been an important actor in Israeli politics all along and security reasons have occasionally been used as an excuse to violate individual rights which should be protected in democratic regimes.