To Solve Its Constitutional Crisis, Israel Needs a Constitution

Amiad Cohen and Sagi Barmak have done an enormous favor to the cause of Israeli political reform. By thinking institutionally and practically they have sketched out a plausible path toward not only defusing the explosive potential of the struggle over Israel’s Supreme Court but toward putting Israeli politics on firmer ground for the future. In doing this, they have applied some lessons of the American constitutional system to a distinctly Israeli set of circumstances. They’ve done this very well, but those American lessons point toward a counterintuitive insight they should consider: there are times when a broader and more ambitious project might actually be more achievable than a targeted reform.

The core insight underlying Cohen and Barmak’s argument is an essential premise of successful political reform in a democracy: the fundamental task of reformers is construction, not demolition.

This can be hard to perceive in real time because political reform almost always arises in response to a crisis of legitimacy. The impetus for change does not come from quiet conversations around seminar tables or from catered dinners shared by temperate moderates who nod along with one another’s platitudes. In Israel, as in America and many other nations that have worked their way toward durable democratic reforms, the pressure for change follows disastrous failures of inadequate institutions, complete with dangerous breakdowns of authority and angry crowds marching in the streets. Such frustration tends to focus people’s attention on what they want to get rid of, not what they lack.