It contrasts with countries like China or Russia, where voting does exist, but major government leaders can ensure that they’re always re-elected and their policies are always enacted.

It means that all citizens (which includes many Arabs and Muslims) can vote and those votes are binding and not manipulated by fraud or threats of violence.

>which includes many Arabs and Muslims

Yes but not all of them which is the problem. Ask poor Palestinians how democratic Israel is. It would be like if the US made laws specifically to imprison masses of black people and then say "we are a democracy, except for those who have been in prison".

> Yes but not all of them which is the problem.

The ones that can't vote in Israel are part of another nation (whether recognized or not) and they vote as part of that nation. A better analogy would be saying that Mexicans can't vote in the US (even though Mexican-Americans can).

True, yes. Functional, eh?

What # election are they on? Four in the last 2 years?

Seems better to have more elections than be stuck with someone for 4 years without any chance of recall. How is more elections worse than fewer?

I'm not sure it's clear that one is better than the other in general. For instance, I would be wary of a snap election after an event perceived as politically significant (e.g. a declaration of war, a major terrorist attack, etc.). Obviously, there can be benefits to building a government or coalition as a response to this sort of event, but it can also lead to transient or reactionary politics. When circumstances permit, I much prefer a more stable system such as a Switzerland-style executive council or otherwise stable administration with a fixed and limited term as long as there is sufficient oversight to deal with neglect of duties, corruption or incapacitation, etc.

I think this discussion is missing important facts: 1. The current ruling government forced these elections 2. the same prime minister was elected in all of these and he could not compile a government due to lack of mandate

The current ruling government (comprised of a shotgun marriage between two opposing parties) disintegrated, right?

My understanding of Israeli politics is that it's two major parties (roughly, conservative and liberal) + a few smaller bloc parties that generally line up with the same major party.

And that the math of this vs the majority needed tends to result in a larger number of elections.

I believe something similar tends to happen in Italy? And maybe Spain?

The flaw, in the sense that overly-frequent elections are unproductive to the business of governing, as I see it is matching a static legal mandate (a government must be able to compose a strict majority) with a variable system (number and size of parties), that leads to some edge cases that make the former difficult / unsustainable.

I'm American though, so I'm looking at this from our (probably to the rest of the world) crazy winner-take-all tilt.

It seems like parliamentary democracies would be improved by either (a) implementing policies and laws that ensure a larger number of smaller blocs, with which alliances can be made (preference voting?) or (b) having "deescalator" clauses if election churn happens, to lower the threshold required to form a sitting government (which then presumably ramps back up over time).

it is more sinister than that i believe. i do not know about spain or italy but these frequent elections come at serious monetary cost in top of the slow down of governing. at the same time the same prime minister is then allowed to extend his role past the legal limit of 2 (full) terms