Lessons For Ireland From The Israeli Grand Coalition (1984-1988)

The incentive structure between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is different now.

As coalition formation edges beyond the public jockeying for position and into the serious negotiation phase, the necessity of the Taoiseach’s office being shared between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is again on the table. It is worth looking at Israeli political history in this regard, as it was there that the rotating Prime Minister was innovated. Like the 2020 FF-FG “grand coalition,” the Israeli election of 1984 generated a stalemate in a hung parliament divided between the Alignment (a Labour-dominated intra-party coalition itself) and Likud parties who each traditionally saw one another as almost existentially oppositional.

Like the recent Irish coalition, the Israeli grand coalition could justify itself to the respective party memberships by invoking the dire threat facing the country, in this case, a disastrous economic crisis and hyperinflation crisis that ultimately required the introduction of the new shekel as a new currency on January 1st, 1986. Like the agreement between Mic…