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The “Arrangements Law” has become one of the most powerful policy tools used by the Israeli government since 1985. Under this omnibus legislation, the Budgets Department at the Ministry of Finance (MOF) introduces various bills and amendments in various policy areas almost on an annual basis. While previous studies presented how the MOF reached a p...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... in the Arrangements Laws have granted authorities to most of the Israeli ministries over the years. 43 Figure 2 provides a dynamic overview of all delegation sentences by the ministers (and ministries accordingly) they authorize to create regulation. As each delegation authorizes either one or more ministries to create regulations, any such authority, even if it was shared with more than one ministry, was counted one time for each ministry. ...
Context 2
... the data in Fig. 2, it is apparent that the Minister of Finance was delegated authorities to create regulations 364 times-a number that makes him the leading minister in terms of authorities to create regulation through the Arrangements Laws. This number constitutes 40 percent of all delegations included in the Arrangements Laws. However, almost half of ...
Context 3
... the authorizations granted to the MOF, the Minister of Health was authorized to make regulations through the arrangements 183 times. As shown in Fig. 2, numerous authorities were granted to the Minister of Health in 2015, as part of the Public Health Protection Law, (Food), that was included in the Arrangements Laws of 2015. Additionally, other authorities were granted to the Minister of Health as part of the National Health Insurance Law, as well as other laws including the ...
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Citations
... In this regard, the regulatory process is an important arena for constraining discretion. More specifically, the existence of legislative and executive veto players may affect the bureaucracies' capacity to make regulations and to determine their content (Kosti, 2021). ...
... Such systems often result in the fragmentation of the party system and multiparty coalitions, and executive consent is perceived as an "institutional check" (Thies, 2001) to maintain control over ministers from other coalition parties. In Israel, for example, the Ministry of Finance has become a powerful veto actor of other ministers' regulation-making authorities (Kosti, 2021). Similar procedures also exist in the UK (The National Archives, 2017, p. 4). ...
... Second, following a 2017 cabinet decision-which encouraged the mechanism of consultation rather than consent-it appears that the use of consent has become a frequent control mechanism for secondary legislation (Prime Minister's Office, 2017). A recent study of Israeli "arrangements" laws has also confirmed this (Kosti, 2021). ...
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Omnibus legislation is the legislative practice of packaging together numerous unrelated measures in one long bill, which is often passed via an expedited process. In many jurisdictions around the world, this practice has become one of the major developments in the legislative process, a powerful policy tool, and a governance device with important implications for democratic governance. Omnibus legislation is known by many names (e.g., “Christmas tree bills”; “portmanteau bills”; “mosaic laws”; “arrangements laws”), and there is no one agreed-upon definition or conceptualization of this legislative practice. It is also one of the most controversial and hotly contested legislative practices. This chapter introduces the book and its rich array of contributions. The chapter presents and analyzes these contributions around four main themes: (1) conceptualizing and defining omnibus legislation; (2) multiple perspectives on omnibus legislation, including extent of its use, reasons for its use, and governance implications of its use, in various countries; (3) cross-national experiences with various means to regulate the use omnibus legislation; (4) normative evaluation of omnibus legislation.
Omnibus legislation is the legislative practice of packaging together numerous unrelated measures in one long bill, which is often passed via an expedited process. In many jurisdictions around the world, this practice has become one of the major developments in the legislative process, a powerful policy tool, and a governance device with important implications for democratic governance. Omnibus legislation is known by many names (e.g., “Christmas tree bills”; “portmanteau bills”; “mosaic laws”; “arrangements laws”), and there is no one agreed-upon definition or conceptualization of this legislative practice. It is also one of the most controversial and hotly contested legislative practices. This chapter introduces the book and its rich array of contributions. The chapter presents and analyzes these contributions around four main themes: (1) conceptualizing and defining omnibus legislation; (2) multiple perspectives on omnibus legislation, including extent of its use, reasons for its use, and governance implications of its use, in various countries; (3) cross-national experiences with various means to regulate the use omnibus legislation; (4) normative evaluation of omnibus legislation.
[Note: This is a preprint. The final version will be published in Bar-Siman-Tov I (ed), Comparative Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Omnibus Legislation (Springer Nature, Cham, forthcoming 2021)]
