Political Ideology, New Politics and Public Trust in Democracy

Media and Society

Israel is experiencing an unprecedented political crisis and the main reason for the political instability is that the electoral system is too fragmented, allowing small parties to gain disproportional influence on government policy. As a result of the proportional electoral system, the government has always been comprised of a multitude of parties, many of them small parties which gained much greater political influence compared to their actual public support. This unique form of parliamentary democracy has been beneficial to political factions comprised of small and medium-sized parties that have unproportioned influence on governments. This is evident in that religion has played an important part in Israeli politics and religious parties have been partners in almost every coalition, largely because their primary concerns are on the religious nature of the state. This made the religious parties’ convenient partners who sought only to safeguard religious interests and guarantee that the state would maintain a Jewish character. This political structure brings up important aspects of political ideology which relate to the level of public trust in the democratic process and the right of identity parties to be dominating in the government. This issue is examined according to the political situation in Israel, where ideological parties which represent identity groups dominate key positions in the government and have the political power to make policy decisions that impact the majority of the population. The conflict discussed in this research is if the plurality of conflicting views, dominated by ideological parties and identity politics, is beneficial to maintain public trust in democracy, or political ideology that represents identity parties prevents politicians from implementing practical politics – thus reducing the trust of the people in the government.

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