Israelis reject authoritarianism, support representative democracy in latest poll

Israeli views of democracy broke with global trends in the latest data from the Pew Research Center released on Wednesday.

The data from Pew looked at the views of 24 countries on democracy and leadership in democratic countries, across the board countries' views of representative democracy have gone down.

Israelis who said representative democracy was (very/somewhat) good fell from 87% in 2017 to 77% in 2023 while those describing it as (very/somewhat) bad grew from 11% to 19%.

Despite the fall, Israelis are still heavily in favor of representative democracy and largely reject all other forms of government according to the data.

Direct democracy was the second most popular choice of government for Israelis with 53% describing it as good while 38% describing it as bad.

Israelis reject authoritarianism

Israelis also rejected all forms of authoritarian government bucking the current global trend found by Pew Research. 

An autocratic system in which "a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts" was heavily rejected by Israelis with only 19% calling it good while 78% called it bad with 49% calling it very bad. 

Israelis also rejected a technocratic system in which "Experts, not elected officials, make decisions according towhat they think is best for the country", although this was by a much smaller margin with 51% calling the system bad whereas 42% called it good, with only 9% calling it very good. 

Military control of the government was also heavily rejected by Israelis with only 14% of people calling such a system good while 85% called it bad.

Israeli commitment to democracy has broken with international trends as many countries both in the West and not have begun looking at authoritarian rule more favorably.

However, this trend is different across the world with Western countries favoring technocratic authoritarianism while non-western countries favor other forms of authoritarianism.

Israelis feel well represented by the current political parties with 73% saying there was at least one party that represented them, this was the second-highest rating in the survey with only Nigerians feeling more represented at 75%. 

This positive feeling toward party representation is common across the Israeli political spectrum 76% of the left, 66% of the center, and 85% of the right all feeling that there are parties that represent them.

When asked about whether increased participation of certain groups (women, poor people, business people, religious people, young adults, labor unions) would improve the country's policies

Israelis were equally split three ways with roughly one-third of respondents answering that the policies would improve, get worse, or stay the same for every group.