Those Were the Days

In the winter in Tel Aviv, the junction of what is known as the "Boursa," or the stock exchange, is an intractable mess of rain, sullen Israelis, and traffic. As my taxi sailed headlong into this rush-hour quagmire, the driver wasted no time locating the ideal target of blame: "the State." And it didn't stop there: "How many years have you been in the country?" What – had he picked up on that grating accent I still carry around? But he was already off on a different point: "So, I've been in this country 58 years, you know? Once upon a time, it was good to live here – it was pure fun! You didn't have all this corruption, I tell you; everything was wonderful. Now – forget it! Everything's corrupt." Just a few days earlier I had a conversation of a quite similar vein with a more cheerful taxi driver. He had a bubbly innocence, but his face soured as a large black car sporting a VIP siren flashed by. "Look at how they waste our resources, those politicians: criminals, all of them. And there's no one good – not one – not a single party either – and no one even on the horizon."

Lately it seems that the public has reached a new low of trust in politicians and perhaps in the political system overall. Or has it? How far back does "lately" go? A look at the data provided by the Guttman Institute, which has measured the public's assessment of how well its government functions, shows that "lately" may have started some time ago.

According to the Institute's surveys, a powerful majority of the population expresses disappointment in the government. When asked a standard question: "What is your opinion about how the government is handling the problems of the current situation?" 89% chose either one of the negative answers: "The government is not handling them well" or "not at all well." Such a high percentage is rarely seen in any survey, and it basically indicates a national consensus (which in itself is a rare beast in Israel).

While this finding may surprise individual citizens, it could also terrify the individual leader hoping that his or her democracy is based on some semblance of legitimacy from the public. But this data does not describe the current government at all – the survey was taken during the leadership of Yitzhak Shamir, in 1988. Exactly the same percentage answered similarly in March 1990, regarding the succeeding government, headed by the same Prime Minister. Going further back, the picture does not improve: 83% of the population expressed disappointment in the Rabin government in 1977. When, then, were the good old days? Compared to those surveys of the past, the situation today (with data up to the end of Sharon's government), in which "only" 75% of respondents expressed disappointment in the government, looks not half-bad. Or perhaps we've resigned ourselves; it's all relative.

It is true that in 1969, two years after the heady victory of the Six-Day War, the ratio of negative to positive responses to the question of how the government is handling problems ("the government is handling tasks well/very well", or "not well/not at all well") was different: at that time 82% responded positively compared to a negligible 18% who gave a negative response. But the trend ended there. Within one year the percentage of negative responses rose nearly 30 percentage points, leaving only a slight, six percent advantage of positive over negative responses. And within five years the proportions were reversed, with a yawning 40-point gap between those who thought the government was handling things badly – 70%, against 30%. The change can be easily understood: a surprise war broke out and the state suffered one of its deepest blows ever, a blow that left a scar in its collective heart up to the present day. Still, this doesn't quite explain the resilience of negative attitudes.

Indeed, since 1970 only one survey has shown an advantage for the positive response; in 1977, immediately after the political "earthquake" in Israel when Likud wrested power from the long-leading Labor, the percentage of those saying the government solved problems well reached 67%, and the negative responses trailed at only 33%. But from that moment until today, the (typically wide) majority has been and still is disappointed with the government's handling of the state's problems, come peace or war (see Table 1). The average level of disappointment over the last five years is in fact high – roughly 74% - but it cannot compete with the disappointment in the good old days, when "everything was wonderful, really" – for example between 1988 and 1992, when the average negative response rate was 81%.

Could it be that the Israeli public is simply accustomed to expressing negative opinions in response to questions about the government, regardless of the specific context? Or perhaps the leadership in general in Israel, not just in the present day, has never been up to the standard that would deserve the public's approval?

TABLE 1
Percentage of positive and negative job approval rating for the question: "What is your opinion about how the government is handling the problems of the current situation?" (14th Government to 30th Government of Israel)

Quit while ahead, or jump ship before the war?
From 1969 on, surveys show that as the government continues to lead, people's disappointment grows: positive assessments decline and negative opinions tend to rise. There are only two exceptions to this trend: during the first government led by Shimon Peres and that of Ariel Sharon. During Peres' first term, from 1984 to 1986 (the National Unity Government), negative assessments dropped from 65% to 56%. Under the government of Ariel Sharon from 2003 to 2006, the percentage of negative opinions fell one percentage point, from 76% in 2003 to 75% in 2006.

At first glance it appears that the longer a government serves, the more positive assessments decrease. Two out of the three longest-serving governments, those of Menachem Begin and Golda Meir, showed the sharpest declines of all in positive responses: Begin's first government began by riding a wave of support, with two-thirds (67%) of the population giving a positive assessment, but that plunged to 32% towards the end of the government's term (see Table 2). Despite the fall in support, the Likud did not suffer a resounding defeat as might have been expected, and in 1981 it went on to form the national unity government – which also lost a sizeable portion of its positive respondents (from 44% to 30% by the end of that government, just 20 months after its formation). Golda Meir's term, too, was one of the longest in Israel since 1969 – nearly five years – and in fact her governments lost support in the sharpest drop of all in that period: a 52 point decrease from the beginning of the first government's term up to her resignation (from 82% who responded that the government is handling problems well, to 30%).

TABLE 2
The gap from first to last surveys during each government term, in the percentage of respondents who said the government is handling problems well, and the number of months each government served.

By contrast, the four shortest-serving governments – those of Shamir (the first government from 1983-1984), Peres (first, 1984), Binyamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak – saw smaller declines in the percentage of people giving a positive assessment of the government's handling of current problems (Shimon Peres' government even managed a slight rise in positive responses between the early and later surveys). As such, it could appear that the longer a government remains in power, the greater its failures – or the more fed up the public becomes. Maybe. But there is another important possibility: two of the four Prime Ministers mentioned above were chosen in direct elections – the system used for the short period of three electoral cycles, 1996, 1999, and 2001 (special elections for Prime Minister) before it was legislated out of practice. So, when considering whether length counts, we need to consider the alternative possibility that when a Prime Minister is directly elected, he or she absorbs all the negative responses, diverting the focus on the government. In other words, perhaps Netanyahu and Barak took the real heat of public frustration, instead of their governments.

A review of the data regarding Prime Ministers in fact shows that when asked about job approval for Ehud Barak, the positive responses declined 20 points in less than one year, from 67% to 47% who assessed his performance positively (the last survey cited here was conducted in May 2000, prior to the Camp David negotiations, after which history shows that his ratings only got worse). If there was comparable data for Netanyahu it is likely that the results wouldn't be too different, proved by his dramatic loss in the 1999 elections.

The data shows that even short-term governments lose support, and that leads to the possibility that the rise in negative assessments of government performance is rather linked to events happening in reality, such as the circumstances of the state, or the Prime Minister's performance, and not just the short attention span of Israeli optimism. There is thus another face to the image of the terminally cynical Israeli: perhaps they start out just a tiny bit more positive, just enough so that there should be somewhere to fall, and then they wait and see: maybe, just maybe, this is the government that will provide us with something good. And perhaps they don't just get genetically "fed up" – maybe something actually happens that manages to really, justifiably upset them. Ehud Barak went into a coalition with Shas against the wishes of his supporters, which couldn't have been more explicit. (Are thousands of demonstrators on election night screaming "anything but Shas!" explicit enough?) And, as if that wasn't enough, he failed at the peace talks (three times) and unfortunately for him was still holding the Prime Minister's office when the second Intifada broke out. Menachem Begin oversaw a period of runaway inflation and the country's first "war of choice"; Yitzhak Rabin got entangled in his wife's American bank accounts, while Golda Meir, whose government suffered the greatest loss of public confidence according to the data above, presided during the war which has already been mentioned one too many times.

In fact, a closer look shows that in some of the governments, the big drop in positive ratings came after the outbreak of a war: this was true for Golda Meir and Ehud Barak (in Rabin's first government, as noted, there were other reasons). If in fact there is a relationship between the two – war and negative assessments of the government's performance – the survey shows an odd finding: after the wars, the population seems to lose faith in the government, while in most Western countries the opposite, or the "rally round the flag" effect, is true. It's not that this doesn't happen in Israel, but the data points to a sort of after-shock directed at the government. There may be other reasons as well, but the numbers make one thing clear: the deep disappointment in Ehud Barak's government didn't start there. It seems possible that Prime Ministers receive negative marks when they confront situations of war. So, if for no other reason than the ratings, it seems worth avoiding the next one.

Dahlia Scheindlin is a researcher at the Guttman Institute looking at changes in political processes within the Israeli electoral system. For the last eight years she has worked as a public opinion research analyst and political consultant, advising campaigns, parties, candidates, and social projects in 12 different countries. She is currently studying towards her doctoral degree in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University.