Populism or Statism? The Struggle for the Character of the Likud

The results of the Likud primaries did not resolve the struggle between the two major currents in the movement. On the contrary, they revealed a near political tie between what can be called the "statist right" and the populist right. It is evident that the Likud has not decided between its two political cultures.

The representatives of the populist current, those who fight against unelected centers of power and demand to return power to elected institutions, are usually more colorful, more populist, and sometimes harder to digest. But one must not confuse style with substance. The democratic question is not who speaks more beautifully, but who is supposed to hold power.

To understand this struggle, one must place it within a broader global process. In recent decades, the sociology of Western politics has changed. Large parts of the left have moved to represent educated elites, professionals, metropolitan residents, and identity and minority groups. At the same time, large parts of the working classes, the periphery, and the traditional public have moved to the right.

The change was not limited to a shift in votes, but expresses a struggle between two conceptions of power. On one side stand layers that give great weight to expertise, professional institutions, and limitations on majority rule. On the other side stand groups that feel that the state has stopped speaking their language, and that more and more decisions are made by people whom no one chose.

From here the new right grew. The Christian Democrats in Germany, the Conservatives in the UK, and the Republicans before Donald Trump tended to defend the institutions of the existing order even when some of their voters felt that the institutions were no longer neutral. In this space, the "Alternative for Germany" party strengthened at the expense of the Christian Democrats, "Reform UK" at the expense of the Conservatives, and the MAGA movement led by Donald Trump, which fundamentally changed the Republican Party. The new right is not satisfied with winning elections, but asks the truly important question: who really rules the state after the elections are over.

In Israel, the struggle is particularly acute because it focuses primarily on the judicial system. During the period of Aharon Barak, justiciability and standing were expanded, broad judicial review developed, and after the Basic Laws of 1992, the Supreme Court's authority to invalidate legislation was recognized. In January 2024, in the ruling on the reasonableness standard, the Supreme Court for the first time invalidated an amendment to a Basic Law. This ruling was another stage in a process where the final word passes from the elected sovereign to the jurists; in fact, there was a regime change from democracy to juristocracy.

Against this background, one must also understand the change that the Likud has undergone. The term "statism" is historically identified with David Ben-Gurion. With Menachem Begin, it is more accurate to speak of a belief in the rule of law, the independence of the Supreme Court, and self-restraint of the government. But this was born in a period when the right saw the Supreme Court as a shield against the rule of Mapai, and did not imagine that the Supreme Court itself would become a central center of power in the political dispute.

Therefore, the people of the old "statist right" — such as Dan Meridor and Tzipi Livni — gradually lost their place in the Likud. Not because Likud voters stopped believing in democracy, but because they stopped believing that unconditional defense of existing institutions is necessarily a defense of democracy.

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Prof. Noam Gidron described the Likud as an institutional center-right party that became populist to an unusual degree compared to the institutional right in Europe. But in what he describes as "populism," one can also see a democratic counter-reaction of a public that has lost faith in elites and unelected institutions. The term populism is sometimes used as a curse that allows one to evade the truly important question: who holds too much power?

There is, of course, also an opposite danger. Populism becomes anti-democratic when a leader claims that only he represents the "true people" and denies the legitimacy of his opponents. But elitism also becomes anti-democratic when a professional group convinces itself that only it understands the public interest and therefore it is allowed to bypass the voter's decision.

This is the struggle that was revealed in the Likud primaries: it is not a struggle between polite people and colorful people, but between a conception of statism that emphasizes trust in institutions and a populist conception that emphasizes the sovereignty of the people. The Likud did not decide between them.

Not all populism is democracy. But without the sovereignty of the people, there is no democracy. The first words of the United States Constitution are not "We the Judges" but "We the People."

So one can argue about the style of the populists in the Likud. But on the identity of the sovereign, one must not be confused.