Naftali Bennett

Discipline as Governance

This essay is part of a broader inquiry into leadership after the exhaustion of charisma. It examines how contemporary democracies, having learned to restrain excessive leadership, increasingly produce forms of disciplined governance that stabilize institutions but struggle to articulate new political horizons. The case of Naftali Bennett offers a particularly clear illustration of this dynamic.

Who is Naftali Bennett?

Naftali Bennett served as prime minister of Israel from 2021 to 2022. His path to office was unusual. He did not lead a large party, nor did he win a decisive electoral mandate. Instead, he became prime minister through the formation of an exceptionally broad and ideologically diverse coalition, assembled after several inconclusive elections and prolonged political paralysis.

Before entering politics, Bennett built a successful career as a technology entrepreneur and served in elite military units. He emerged politically from the national-religious right, a background that gave him clear ideological commitments while also distinguishing him from secular centrist leaders.

To readers unfamiliar with Israeli politics, Bennett may appear an unlikely subject for sustained reflection. His tenure was brief, his rhetoric restrained, and his public persona notably uncharismatic. Yet precisely because of this, Bennett’s leadership provides an instructive case for understanding how disciplined governance functions in post-charismatic democracies.

The Post-Charismatic Challenge

As argued in the introduction to this series, disciplined politics emerges as a corrective once charismatic leadership exhausts institutions. In such conditions, societies no longer seek leaders who promise redemption, mobilize permanent emotion, or embody national destiny. They seek leaders who can lower the temperature, restore basic functionality, and keep systems from fracturing further.

The challenge, however, is double. Governance must be stabilized without returning to excess—but also without collapsing politics into mere administration. The question is not simply how to restrain leadership, but how to govern responsibly once restraint becomes necessary.

Bennett governed squarely within this dilemma.

Discipline as Governance

Bennett’s approach to leadership was marked by a consistent refusal of political theater. He avoided existential rhetoric, resisted moral dramatization, and rarely framed politics in redemptive terms. His speeches were pragmatic, often procedural, and deliberately unspectacular.

This style was not accidental. It reflected a conception of leadership shaped by management rather than performance. Problems were treated as tasks to be prioritized, decomposed, and addressed incrementally. Coalition politics, often denounced in Israel as ideological betrayal, was embraced as a civic necessity under conditions of fragmentation.

In practice, Bennett’s government focused on restoring administrative continuity: passing a long-delayed budget, stabilizing ministries, reducing friction between institutions, and maintaining a working relationship among deeply divided partners. Authority was exercised cautiously, with a clear preference for process over personal assertion.

In this sense, Bennett represents one of the clearest contemporary examples of disciplined governance—leadership defined not by vision or charisma, but by restraint, execution, and institutional stewardship.

The Limits of Discipline

Yet the coherence of Bennett’s leadership also reveals its limits.

Discipline, in his case, functioned primarily as containment. It prevented collapse, lowered political intensity, and restored a measure of governability. What it did not do was rearticulate a broader political horizon. The emphasis on management left fundamental questions of direction unresolved.

Bennett did not attempt to redefine Israel’s political imagination, whether in relation to the conflict, civic identity, or the long-term structure of the state. His leadership accepted existing constraints and worked within them effectively—but it did not seek to transform them.

This is not a moral criticism. It is a structural observation. Disciplined governance is well suited to moments of exhaustion, but poorly equipped to generate new meaning. It stabilizes, but it does not reorient. Bennett solved the problem of excess, but not the problem that follows restraint: how politics moves from survival to purpose.

Why Bennett Matters Beyond Israel

Bennett’s case is instructive far beyond the Israeli context. Across mature democracies, leaders increasingly emerge who are competent, restrained, and managerial—yet hesitant or unable to articulate new political horizons. Stability replaces imagination; governance replaces direction.

Bennett shows that such leadership is possible, and that it can be effective under conditions of strain. He also shows its limits. Disciplined governance can preserve institutions, but it cannot by itself renew political purpose.

Understanding Bennett, therefore, is not about assessing his success or failure as a political actor. It is about recognizing a broader pattern: the kind of leadership contemporary democracies are structurally inclined to produce once charismatic excess has been contained.

Bennett clarifies both the necessity and the limits of discipline. The essays that follow examine how other political figures respond to the same post-charismatic condition, each revealing a different configuration of authority, stability, and political imagination.

Part of the series Leadership After Charisma
(See the introduction: “Leadership After Charisma — Why these essays”)