Knesset Election, March 2006
By Ryan Griffin, Research Fellow
Published April 5th 2006
Israel held elections to its parliament, the Knesset, on March 28,
2006. Frequently held up as an example of why not to adopt proportional
voting, Israel's election system, critics argue, tends to produce
unstable, unworkable governing coalitions. But this tendency has less
to do with proportional voting than the form Israel has chosen to use,
in tandem with its wider political environment. This report focuses on
the effects of Israel's low electoral threshold and closed party list
system.