Blame Avoidance, Crisis Exploitation, and COVID-19 Governance Response in Israel

Prof. Moshe Maor

Although the Israeli government consistently adopted unregulated, unorganized, inefficient, uncoordinated, and uninformed governance arrangements during the first wave of COVID-19 in March-April 2020, the public health outcome was relatively successful, a puzzle that this paper seeks to explain. The premise underlying my analysis is that allegations by political opponents and the general public of policy underreaction by the government, rather than policy overreaction, pose a very significant threat to elected executives’ reputations, especially at times of crisis. This is because such allegations imply a failure to accomplish the distinct core mandate for protecting human life with which they are tasked, suggesting that these executives are captured by certain political, economic, or social actors to the detriment of the public at large. Political executives wishing to avoid such allegations can, for example, implement extreme policy solutions. 

The claim advanced in the paper is that opting for the most aggressive strategies on the policy menu effectively “protects” elected executives from future blame games and official inquiries. Thereafter, and especially when crises occur at politically sensitive junctures, the window widens for crisis exploitation, which can be achieved by adopting certain governance arrangements to obtain short-term political benefits (e.g., gaining more power, public support, and legitimacy), and elected executives face increasing incentives to pursue such avenues. 

The specific claim examined in the paper is that unregulated, unorganized, inefficient, uncoordinated, and uninformed governance arrangements, employed by the Israeli government in response to the first wave of COVID-19 during the period February–May 2020, have ensured that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retained complete control over strategic and operational crisis management, safeguarding his ability to shape the psychological and emotional context of the crisis, and protecting himself from future audits and the ensuing blame games. To examine the plausibility of this claim, I employ a historical-institutional analysis accompanied by interviews with elected executives during the period under examination. 

I find that, at an early stage of the outbreak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu employed one of the most aggressive control measures on the policy “menu”—namely, a complete shutdown of society and the economy—in order to contain the spread of the virus and “flatten the curve.” However, he thereafter consistently adopted unregulated, unorganized, inefficient, uncoordinated, and uninformed governance arrangements. 

Specifically, the centralized decision-making he employed stemmed from the nature of this crisis as well as from a clear-cut policy orientation at this strategic juncture, as Netanyahu himself clearly stated: “I instructed [health officials] to overreact rather than underreact.” Due to the prime minister’s insistence on managing the coronavirus crisis singlehandedly, this instruction gave him and his trusted advisors complete freedom vis-à-vis policy and governance choices. A further result of the prime minister’s insistence on managing the coronavirus crisis alone was his decision not to activate the national crisis management strategy for pandemics that had been compiled in 2007 — “A Healthy Wave” (Nachshol Bari). An example of the derived chaotic decision-making was recorded on March 9, when a regulation was introduced requiring anyone returning from abroad to enter home quarantine. However, it was not decided which body would be responsible for enforcing this decision. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon gave another example of the chaotic decision-making: “We have sacrificed the economy on the altar of health […] when we begin to feel that this group [the leaders of the Ministry of Health] is exaggerating a bit, I give an instruction that contradicts what they requested.” 

In addition, as a result of the decision not to activate the 2007 plan for a state of emergency, most of the burden in tackling the crisis fell on the Ministry of Health — a ministry that is usually occupied with regulatory activities and therefore lacks skills in operating logistical systems, managing states of emergency, and overseeing situations of uncertainty. During the crisis, the Ministry of Health did not succeed in establishing a clear policy due to its weak strategic capacity. In addition, it did not involve the Health Management Organizations (Kupot Holim), which constitute the operational arm of the ministry, in community testing. Thus, unsurprisingly, the ministry failed to organize mass coronavirus testing and was far from meeting the prime minister’s pledge of 30,000 tests per day; likewise, its testing system was neither sufficiently fast nor extensive to provide an accurate picture of how the virus was spreading.

I also find that the control center established by the Mossad included task forces that were comprised, among others, of representatives from the IDF, volunteer organizations, hi-tech entrepreneurs, academics, and other volunteers. Lacking a central coordinating entity, the decision-making remained in the hands of the prime minister and the director general of the Ministry of Health, while the role of the government was restricted to a discussion forum. Indeed, some coordination was managed by the Council for National Security, but this is an advisory body operating under the responsibility of the prime minister, without any experience in managing and coordinating national crises. The level of political flexibility was amplified by classifying all transcripts of cabinet discussions concerning COVID-19 for a period of 30 years. The involvement of the Mossad and Shin Bet in operational matters furthermore ensured that information is withheld from the public, because the most stringent agency in a network, in terms of information access, tends to govern the extent of access that any associated agency can offer. This, in turn, may also have made it difficult for government agencies to share information. 

I likewise find that by adopting these governance arrangements, among others, Prime Minister Netanyahu enjoyed high levels of public support during the period under examination, and this helped him to create an “emergency unity government.” Regarding personal benefits, Netanyahu was able to delay his trial proceedings. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the adoption of these blame avoidance and crisis exploitation strategies therefore constituted a politically well-calibrated and highly effective short-term strategy. 

Finally, the unique context clearly undermines the ability to generalize from my findings. Indeed, the political context examined herein is too unique to be comparable, and hence the theoretical and empirical significance of this paper is rather limited. Still, even the cynical political considerations of elected executives tackling a crisis while their political and personal futures are hanging in the balance should be tackled both conceptually and empirically. 

Moshe Maor is a full professor in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the incumbent of the Wolfson Family Chair in Public Administration.

The post is based on the following article:

Maor, Moshe. 2021. Blame Avoidance, Crisis Exploitation, and COVID-19 Governance Response in Israel.” Israel Studies Review, 36 (3): 84-105. 
https://doi.org/10.3167/isr.2021.360303