Comment by mothballed

3 hours ago

[flagged]

I think this focuses on the wrong issues.

Tin my observation the main advantage of swiss system is the institution of the referendum.

It means that every major decision is decided by the people. The elected government decides on the 99.9% other issues.

The consequence of this system is that absolute majority of public discourse focuses on the issues and problems and not party affiliation.

So e.g. the most consequential election isn't the one where you have to choose the guy who will make everything great again, but e.g. the referendum if the country should spend billions over the next decades on the new tunnel under alps instead of other infrastructure projects.

  • You're completely ignoring that the Swiss system itself was a cultural output of that voting block, one they've kept remarkably insular, and with the remnants of this system going back to something like at least the middle ages. And then lucked out in many ways in WWII where most of Europe did not. The system didn't make the 90-95% euro voting block, the 90-95% white euro voting block made and support the Swiss direct democracy system itself in the context of finding it functional for their relatively insular society.

    You can't just ramrod a cultural output into other cultures and expect it to work or even expect different voting demographics who might have individually accepted direct democracy to continue to do so once put in a more diverse country. They tried democracy in Somalia and it worked worse by most measured metrics (including economic) than the xeer system of tribal hearings and decentralized governance for which their culture had adapted.

    • The system is unique to Switzerland.

      But it's not the consequence of the skin color or the neutrality. All European countries have been practically 100% white until not long ago with vastly different outcomes.

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