Bring The People Back In:an Analysis Of Referendums In Switzerland

Switzerland is certainly the world leader in the use of direct democracy devices. Since the institution was introduced in 1848, Switzerland has held more nationwide referendums than all other countries combined. Also, about two-thirds of referendums all around the globe after 1945 were held in Switzerland. On the federal level, the Swiss political system has three different kind forms of referendums:mandatory referendum, optional referendum and popular initiative, all of which are legal binding. Unlike other democratic societies, where referendums are only used for deciding state-defining or deadlock-breaking problems, almost any kind of the public policies could be put into referendums in Switzerland. To a large extent, referendum is a centerpiece of Swiss political system.This research is mainly intended to explore the relationship between Swiss political system and its widely used referendums. On one hand, as a dependent variant, it is found that the successful use of referendums in Switzerland is closely linked with its longtime direct democratic tradition, civic culture, rich and equal social distribution, crosscutting cleavage and consociational democracy. All of these factors could be regarded as check-balance forces against referendums. On the other hand, as an independent variant, referendums have exerted great impacts on Swiss political system. For ordinary people, referendums give them veto-power against governmental policies and initiatives bring agenda-setting into their hands. It is referendum that enables them to much more deeply participate in the policy decision-making than ever before. For political parties and interest groups, referendums are effective weapons they can tactically employ to challenge the established political arrangements. Besides, direct democracy is also playing an important role in Swiss consociational system, whether for consociational politics’ establishment and maintenance.As a central topic in western political theory, the debate about which democracy, direct or representative, is more desirable has been arousing many political students’ discussion. However, from Swiss experience, we could have much confidence that direct democracy is not an absolutely utopian idea and widely-used direct democracy could survive in modern state. Nonetheless, it does not mean that direct democracy could take the place of representative institutions in modern politics. Swiss experience shows that direct democracy is more like a supplement rather than substitution to the established democracies. More importantly, it should be born in mind that any power need constraint, including popular power. Only by this could we avoid going to hell on the way to heaven.