Autumn of the patriarchs? Strong leaders face popular pushback.
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Ned Temko Columnist
| London
There was a time, not long ago, when Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could confidently bask in supporters’ chants of “melech Yisrael” – king of Israel.
But this week he was forced to retreat from planned judicial reforms by unprecedentedly large demonstrations. They made Mr. Netanyahu “pause” his reforms, but they did something else, too: They tarnished his brand of strongman populist politics.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onLeaders with autocratic tendencies have flourished around the world in recent years. This week some of them have been humbled by popular pushback.
Unrest elsewhere has carried a similar message in recent days.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron is hardly a typical “strongman.” He is an urbane, unapologetic liberal. But his office gives him overwhelming decision-making power, and last week he bypassed Parliament – where he does not enjoy a majority – to enact an unpopular pension reform without a vote. That sparked huge and angry protest demonstrations.
In Turkey, the major catalyst for disaffection with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been the recent, devastating earthquake. But this has fed into deeper concerns over his 20-year rule – especially the accelerating erosion of judicial independence, and personal freedoms, in recent years.
Messrs. Erdoğan, Macron, and Netanyahu may yet weather the headwinds they face. But notable in all three of their countries has been the prominent role taken by young people, clearly worried about their countries’ future. That poses a long-term challenge.
There was a time, not long ago, when Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could confidently bask in supporters’ chants of “melech Yisrael” – king of Israel.
Yet this week, facing protests unprecedented in the country’s 75-year history, he was forced into an uncharacteristic retreat – over planned judicial reforms that would strip the Supreme Court of its role as a check on executive power.
Mr. Netanyahu has now “paused,” though not abandoned, that effort.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onLeaders with autocratic tendencies have flourished around the world in recent years. This week some of them have been humbled by popular pushback.
But it’s not just his judicial plans that have taken a hit, both inside Israel and from key democratic allies, including America.
Also tarnished, polls suggest, has been his brand of politics: the strongman populism through which he has not only won elections, but also made his own personality and leadership seem synonymous with Israel’s security, stability, and influence in the wider world.
And that’s a shift that may not be limited to Israel.
Something similar seems to be happening in two major U.S.-allied countries in Europe, France and Turkey, where Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are seeing their status and authority questioned.
There, too, specific policy controversies have prompted wider doubts about entrenched political leaders – the power they wield, their style of governance, and the direction in which they are taking their countries.
That’s certainly been the case in Israel, where the judicial reform plan touched off broader alarm among many Israelis about how and where Mr. Netanyahu was leading the country.
The judicial changes were always going to prove controversial. Israel has a single legislative chamber and no written constitution. The Supreme Court represents the only institutional check on executive power.
Mr. Netanyahu might have eased through a more limited reform; indeed, some kind of compromise could yet emerge from Mr. Netanyahu’s forced “pause.”
Yet opposition to the plan ended up becoming something like a street revolution because it raised deeper concerns about his rule and about the fractiousness and fragility of Israel’s democracy with him at the helm.
The fractiousness isn’t new. For years, a divide has been widening between largely secular, Western-looking Israelis in coastal cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa, and Orthodox communities in areas including Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements, where there’s a conviction that Israel should be a more explicitly religious state.
These two groups have coexisted essentially by living their own lives on their own terms. Yet even before the judicial plan, concern was growing over the prospect that religion might exert a far greater influence on public policy than at present.
There was widespread unease in many quarters over Mr. Netanyahu’s choice of partners when assembling a parliamentary majority for his latest coalition government. He included a pair of small far-right parties espousing a brand of anti-Arab religious nationalism long viewed as beyond the political pale.
Since the judicial changes were being driven by the far right, they turned that unease into something nearer to alarm.
Many of the citizens who poured into the streets to protest feared that the proposed laws would pave the way for religious restrictions in public spaces, or curtailed rights for Arab citizens, LGBTQ+ people, and other minorities – with the Supreme Court powerless to intervene.
Mr. Netanyahu, himself, emerged looking less like the personal embodiment of Israel’s national interests than a self-interested politician ready to alter the decades-old character and balance of the state in order to maintain his own position.
In France and Turkey, the policy issues and personalities differ. But the concerns being voiced about their powerful leaders, and about their countries’ future course, echo recognizably.
President Macron, unlike Mr. Netanyahu, is an urbanely unapologetic liberal. But he holds an even more formidable position of power. Under a political system designed for – and by – the late Charles de Gaulle, the French president wields ultimate decision-making power.
To an almost regal office, Mr. Macron has brought an almost regal leadership style – not least in pushing through a controversial policy change that has provoked strikes and demonstrations by millions across the country.
The change involves France’s state pension system. Warning that it will be bankrupt within a decade without reform, Mr. Macron is raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.
The anger this has unleashed draws largely on a sense that a long, well-funded retirement is part of the French social contract. But it has been exacerbated by the way the president has enacted the reform. Lacking a working majority in Parliament, he used a provision in the Gaullist constitution allowing him to push it through by decree.
In Turkey, the major catalyst for disaffection with President Erdoğan has been the recent, devastating earthquake. But this has fed into deeper concerns over his 20-year rule – especially the accelerating erosion of judicial independence, and personal freedoms, in recent years.
Mr. Erdoğan, President Macron, and Prime Minister Netanyahu may yet weather such headwinds, drawing on the powers of incumbency and long-honed political skills.
But another common denominator in their situations will still cause them concern: the fact that the pushback they are facing is not driven only by political rivals or seasoned activists.
Notable in all three countries has been the prominent role taken by young people, clearly worried about their countries’ future. That poses a long-term challenge.
