this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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No fucking way, but mah direct democracy ...
So. Switzerland doesn't really have fully direct democracy in the necessary sense. It's still an old nation-state with laws made in the olden day when you had to compromise. There are many cases where the "direct" part is optional and requires interested people to assemble signatures yadda-yadda. Not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal. That aside, its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing. Which means that for some issues it will always drift shitward.
It also has separation of 3 kinds of government by degree of locality, but not separation of the "an entity ensuring food safety can't regulate telecommunications" or "an entity regulating police labor safety can't regulate riot police acceptable action" kinds.
(Which is why I usually refer to my preference for a kind of "direct democracy" as a revised one-level Soviet system with mandatory rotation, plenty of places and sortition to state worker roles, despite that not having very good connotations.)
What democracy does not rely on compromise?
Compromises on principles, not compromises with people.