By Tamar Hofnung

This story was originally published in Haaretz on March 31, 2025.

For the Hebrew version of this article on the Haaretz website, click here.

When Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan examined American democracy in the post–New–Deal era, he did not see it as a celebration of civic sovereignty but rather as a dangerous structure of temptation and systemic corruption. Not corruption in the criminal sense, but a deeper form of structural decay: a government composed of self-interested actors—politicians, judges, bureaucrats—who, he believed, acted out of self-interest to preserve their power, budgets, and influence.

Buchanan, a conservative economist and the father of Public Choice Theory, was less familiar to the general public than his peers Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, but his influence on conservative political strategy—particularly through his approach to institutional design that sought to constrain democratic processes—was no less profound. He brought the logic of economics into the realm of politics, replacing ideals with interests and civic engagement with organized competition for control.

In Buchanan’s view, self-interest extended far beyond voters and elected officials. Institutional gatekeepers—bureaucrats, legal advisors, regulators, and judges—whom liberal democracies traditionally see as impartial guardians of the constitutional order, were, to him, key actors in a system prone to self-preservation. He believed these figures were not neutral professionals nor disinterested stewards of the public good, but rather entrenched players with their own incentives and agendas. In many ways, Buchanan was an early herald of the idea of the "deep state"—not in the conspiratorial sense, but as a conceptual framework to describe a process by which, in the absence of constitutional restraints, gatekeepers and civil servants themselves become stakeholders.

In this sense, Buchanan believed that debates over who holds office were largely beside the point. He and his colleagues grew disillusioned with conservative leaders like Eisenhower and Reagan, who spoke of liberty and limited government yet left the machinery of the state intact. Their conclusion was clear: lasting change wouldn’t come from winning elections—it required redesigning the rules of the game. What was needed was constitutional hardwiring: a legal architecture designed to constrain government action regardless of who wins at the ballot box. The result would be the façade of a democracy that was increasingly sealed off from public influence—a system where citizens could still vote but could no longer effect meaningful change.

Chile became a proving ground for Buchanan’s ideas. Following the 1973 coup that installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator, Buchanan was invited to help design a new constitution—one that ensured that, even if the military regime were to fall, the neoliberal economic mechanisms would remain locked into law. The constitution enacted under Pinochet erected formidable barriers to social and political change: privatization was enshrined into constitutional law, and the judiciary was retooled, not as a check on executive power, but as a mechanism for preserving the new economic order. Judges were no longer expected to interpret laws independently—they were tasked with enforcing a preordained ideological vision. Within a decade, a country once marked by a strong welfare state and a sizable middle class was transformed into one of the most unequal societies in Latin America. Even after a return to democratic rule, elected leaders found themselves unable to reverse course—constitutional amendments required a virtually unreachable two-thirds majority. Democracy was neutralized from within.

This outcome was no accident. It reflected the strategic core of Buchanan’s political philosophy. Beneath his economic reasoning lay a profound mistrust—not only of public judgment, but of the idea that democratic majorities should be allowed to drive meaningful change. To guard against that possibility, he envisioned a system in which popular power was deliberately constrained. Aware that such revisions would provoke resistance if they were fully understood by the public, Buchanan relied on a strategy of stealth. Far-reaching reforms were to be framed as technical, neutral-sounding measures. Invoking terms like “governance,” “liberty,” and “balance of powers,” he sought to mask the real objective: curbing the scope of democratic influence. Through this carefully coded language, constitutional overhauls could be reframed as minor procedural tweaks—transformative in substance but mundane in appearance.

This strategy is now unfolding in Israel with alarming precision. What we are witnessing in 2025 is not simply a partisan conflict, but a concerted effort to reconfigure the foundations of democracy itself. The government's proposed judicial overhaul is not just a power grab—it is a calculated effort to rewrite the rules of governance in ways that will outlast any electoral cycle. The established safeguards of democratic order—the judiciary, regulatory bodies, legal advisors, and bureaucracy—are being strategically redefined as a self-interested, interfering elite supposedly thwarting the popular will. "Deep state" rhetoric has become utilized as a strategic instrument—not to broaden democratic participation but to erode it. While presented as restoring power to the people, in reality these reforms work to dismantle the very institutions that give citizen sovereignty meaningful expression.

What is at stake goes beyond institutional balance; it concerns the future of Israeli democracy itself. The proposed changes would grant the ruling coalition nearly total control over judicial appointments, the authority to pass Basic Laws through simple majority votes, and the capacity to cement these laws with supermajority requirements—effectively placing them beyond future modification. Meanwhile, judicial review would be gutted. The result would be a system where, even if public sentiment shifts, the political order remains immutable.

The strategic brilliance of this approach lies in its subtlety. No dramatic regime change announcements are required. The flag remains, and the anthem still plays. But the rules are rewritten to ensure that, henceforth, regardless of who wins elections, the scope of democratic decision-making becomes significantly constrained. Fundamental issues—including ultra-Orthodox military service, territorial concessions, or significant economic and social policy reforms—will no longer be open to genuine public deliberation. The system remains democratic in appearance, but its foundations have been locked against change.

This quiet revolution follows the playbook that Buchanan helped design. Though he likely never imagined his ideas would take root in Israel, his blueprint is being followed with remarkable precision: weakening institutional gatekeepers, stripping oversight, mistrusting the public, and entrenching a preferred socioeconomic order through constitutional engineering.

What is unfolding, then, is no longer a routine political dispute in need of compromise. It is an effort to strip democracy of its core function—the capacity to bring about change. The goal is not to eliminate politics outright but to hollow it out: to encase governing institutions in rigid legal frameworks so that crucial decisions are no longer shaped by public will but by prior design. Democracy, under this model, becomes a shell where the majority can vote but cannot meaningfully shape outcomes.

This approach embodies what Buchanan understood—and what reform advocates in Israel are now implementing: if you lock democracy in just the right way, you can control it even when you have lost majority support.

Tamar Hofnung, Ph.D., is the Israel Institute Fellow at UCLA’s Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and UCLA’s Department of Sociology.