
Swiss Political System: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know - zdw
http://250bpm.com/blog:161
======
lwkl
What I like most about the Swiss political system is the federal council.
Seven people share the duties of the head of state and government. They each
lead federal department like a ministers. The members are elected by the
united federal assembly. The big parties split the seats proportional to their
seats in parliament. The role of president rotates among the members of the
federal council and is limited to one year at a time. The president is just
first among equals and doesn‘t have any power over the other members of the
federal council.

I think this is great for the politics in Switzerland everyone from left to
right is represented in the executive and you can‘t just blame the other party
for the problems during their terms. This forces the parties to compromise and
the opposition based on the issues and not only the party membership.

~~~
exclipy
What stops these 7 members forming two coalitions and having it regress to a
two-party polarization?

~~~
baby
that's something I never understood about US politics, what prevented Sanders
from creating its own party for the US election and not run for the democratic
primaries?

~~~
md_
The primary attribute of American politics that encourages a two party system
is what’s known as “first past the post” elections.

America’s two main parties have changed over the years (remember the Whigs?),
so the existence of a two-party system cannot be attributed purely to control
exerted by the _current_ two parties.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law).

~~~
bobthepanda
Another, often overlooked part, is that competing in an American election
requires _very_ expensive media and outreach campaigns.

Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B. These are formidable sums
for non-establishment parties. Bernie spent $230M in a primary.

To give a rough comparison, the UK limits spending per constituency, so the
upper limit a party is allowed to spend in the UK is 19.5 GBP.

~~~
Stupulous
> Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B. These are formidable sums
> for non-establishment parties.

I was going to write a comment about how shocked I was that Trump outspending
Clinton by a factor of 500 didn't see any media coverage, but it looks like
that's supposed to be 680M.

~~~
bobthepanda
my bad, before the morning coffee and now it's too late to edit the comment.

~~~
Stupulous
No worries, just a typo, wouldn't have mentioned it if I saw I wasn't the
first to do so.

------
glup
My dad's family is Swiss. Three things I've picked up visiting them: 1)
various members are affiliated with different parties across the political
spectrum and there's a lot of interesting, productive conversation (over wine)
about domestic policy, in a way most US families couldn't manage 2) even the
most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party
completely, unabashedly insane (esp. regarding the need for social services
and market regulations) 3) they are perplexed by gun violence... while there's
a very strong culture of gun ownership (tied to (generally?) compulsory
military service) I get the feeling they'd ban them in an instant if they had
incidents in schools

~~~
underlines
I'm Swiss. US pro-gun people (ab)use our liberal gun rights to proof their
point.

But there are huge differences:

1\. Concealed and unconcealed carrying is not allowed. You have to transport
your weapon in a very specific way, without ammo etc. Also anyone with a gun
in public would trigger a police intervention within minutes.

2\. Active military personnel are allowed to stored their gun at home, but
almost nobody does that. Those who do get 5 bullets, in a sealed box. They're
not allowed to open it, except in war. The seal gets checked every time you go
back for service.

3\. Storage of legal weapons at home is very strictly regulated. Loaded guns
are basically forbidden, ammunition has to be stored separately etc.

4\. If you don't have a very clean history, it's almost impossible to get the
right to buy guns.

5\. Automatic weapons are illegal.

PS: Those "facts" are from my memory, as I don't live in Switzerland anymore.
Fellow Swiss users, if there's anything wrong please correct me.

~~~
esarbe
I'd like to add what I think is the most important contributing factor; a sane
gun culture.

In Switzerland, every gun enthusiast expected to be a member of one local
Schützenverein. While you get to meet some really crazy nuts there, these
Schützenvereins are very much interested that there is a space for guns in
Switzerland's culture, so they are very considerate about training of handling
of weapons, maintenance and gun safety. This creates an environment where it's
save to be enthusiastic about gun while still being aware that these are
weapons and not just and toy.

~~~
spaetzleesser
I have read that this is how the NRA used to be. Focusing on training and safe
practices. Only in the last decades that changed to where we are now.

~~~
techsupporter
When I was a teenager, the only gun safety and hunter training classes in my
area were organized by the NRA. They were the only classes most ranges and
hunting groups would accept, so we all took them. I'm not sure they'd be
recognizable by anyone in today's NRA. A lot of emphasis was placed on proper
use, and one of those "improper" uses was a gun for intimidation.

My instructor, in a deeply-conservative area of a deeply-conservative state
state, was appalled at the idea of "open carry," and our instructional
material warned against it as a bad idea. I wanted to look him up a few years
ago when people were getting all bothered about Starbucks' firearms policy to
see what he thought but he'd passed away a year before.

------
jacquesm
I'll give you just one reason why the Swiss system is currently the best on
Earth. Everywhere I go people always talk about political systems as 'they
have decided x, y or z'. In Switzerland people will say 'we have decided'
_even when they disagree with the outcome of the vote_. That's a major
difference and as a result the Swiss populace is typically very well educated
on the matters on which they vote. This is hard to port to other countries for
many reasons but it definitely is a very big benefit.

~~~
elchin
Spot on! Swiss have the unity that I've never seen anywhere else.

~~~
formerly_proven
The Swiss Confederation is, in spirit, a confederation of citizens, and not of
states.

------
beagle3
Related:

Women in Switzerland did not have equal voting rights until 1990, when the
last (small) canton finally made them equal. But it was only in 1971 when they
first gained the right to vote at all.

A Canadian friend living in Switzerland told me that even though there aren't
any legal limitations on women any more, the culture in still much more tilted
towards "a woman's place is it home raising the kids" than in Canada or the
US.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerland)

~~~
mahkeiro
You gave to realize that Switzerland is multicultural. For instance women
suffrage was given in 1959 in canton de Vaud (French speaking part of
Switzerland), and that was is true in one part of Switzerland can be quite
different elsewhere in the country.

~~~
beagle3
The 1959 right was for local referendums only, though. The first nation wide
referendum women could vote in was 1971 (and not all of them could until
1990).

------
mem0r1
The lack of a constitutional court at federal level is in fact a major
weakness of the system, there have been several attempts (1999, 2011, ...) to
give the supreme court that competency (similar as in the US). Without such a
court, the parliament is free to pass unconstitutional laws at their own
discretion (which happens from time to time). Referendums are not a very good
instrument for ensuring the constitutionality of legislation. Almost no
citizen reads a law proposal which for example consits of 50 pages, let alone
has the time or ability to ensure constitutional compliance of such. Approval
of a particular legislation at a referendum merely signals basic political
acceptance and is very much prone to manipulation by media (dis-)information,
political advertisments, etc. At least the supereme court de-facto acts as a
limited "constituional court" to protect the rights enshrined in the European
human rights convention. Very interesting read: Federalist paper No. 78

~~~
m_mueller
As a Swiss I agree that compatibility with the constitution is a major problem
of referendums, somewhat less so of parliament decisions. One measure I'd like
to see is to (a) forbid the government to send the people anything other than
the proposed legal text (as other material is often very manipulative) and (b)
extend the options for answering to yes/no/I don't understand. Third option in
enough quantity could then trigger another round of making the text more clear
and succinct and then trying again on the next voting Sunday.

~~~
rumcajz
That sounds exploitable. People would strategically vote "I don't understand"
to delay the initiative.

~~~
m_mueller
Why do that instead of just "no"?

~~~
rumcajz
Because likely to elicit reworking of the proposal you would need less than
50% of the vote. To defeat the proposal you need at least 50%.

~~~
m_mueller
you could still deal with that. one option would be to just go for the outcome
with the highest percentage, instead of the simple 50% majority.

------
vmception
I'm a big fan of the Swiss political system.

I don't bother bruising anyone else's egos by suggesting how it could
complement or totally solve their jurisdiction's problem, I understand that it
is a smaller geographic area 1/3rd the size of Pennsylvania with a population
of 8 million.

My _observation_ is that they are a multicultural society and their political
concept can work across a much larger region, but my _conclusion_ is that its
right for me!

------
glup
To add to what's in the article: the Swiss have compulsory military service
that puts almost all young men (and many young women) of hugely varying
backgrounds together and forces them to work together in really hard contexts.
This seems to do a lot to bridge divides like urban/rural, socioeconomic
status, and language backgrounds.

~~~
exoque
The army was considerably downsized in the last decades, so while this used to
be true for men, it isn't anymore. And the number of women is and always was
more or less negligible.

~~~
deflox
Well the army was downsized yes but most men still do their military service.
I just recently completed my service and almost everyone I know did it too
with maybe one or two exceptions. So this is still true. Except the women part
yes this is really not significant.

~~~
exoque
Most != almost all, the number seems to be between 60 and 70% per year.

------
ipnon
>Back in 1917 Switzerland used to use majority system in the parliamentary
elections. This led to a situation where the Liberal Democrats got only 40.8%
of the vote, but 54.5% of the seats in parliament. The absolute majority
allowed them to pass the laws, regardless of the will of the 59.2% who voted
for other parties.

>Needless to say, Liberal Democrats torpedoed every attempt to replace the
majority voting system by a proportional one. If the instrument of popular
initiatives was not available, it would be a dead end. The voters would have
to wait until Liberal Democrats lose some of their voter support. But even
then, thanks to the majority system, an absolute majority in parliament could
be won by another party, who would again find it difficult to abolish the
system that brought it to power.

>General dissatisfaction with the state of affairs led to the launch of the
popular initiative "For a proportional system of elections to the National
Council" in 1918 which succeeded with 66.8% votes in favor.

>In 1919, elections were finally held using the new, proportional system and
Liberal Democrats lost the absolute majority.

My theory is that the success of radical political change (peaceful or
revolutionary) decreases with population size. The population of Switzerland
was around 3 million in the late 1910s. The population of America was less
than 3 million during the entirety of its revolutionary war.

~~~
rumcajz
Not being able to scale is one of the arguments that are often being use to
dismiss Swiss political system, without much further explanation. However,
where is the bar? I mean, I would understand if there was a limit somewhere
around the Dunbar's number, but why would something that scales to 8 millions
not scale to 20 or 50 millions?

~~~
ipnon
The decomposition of the federation into appropriately sized cantons, which
are decomposed into appropriately sized municipalities seems key here. At some
point, the community level must be reached for all parties to feel they are
being treated fairly. The Jurassic example shows this.

Implementing popular and legislative referendums at the federal level of the
United States is a pipe dream. The powers that be have too tight a grip to
relax it any. What is feasible in America today, especially in the more
progressive cities like New York, is for the local city council to modify the
constitution of the city and cede some its power to the people through the
referendum mechanism. This would be popular and politically feasible.

------
underlines
Consensus is ingrained in Swiss mentality.

The legislative referenda are probably the single most important force that
driving Switzerland away from the political polarization and towards the rule
by consensus.

~~~
wirrbel
The referendums arent the only thing, I didn't read the article but searched
for konkordanz/concordance(?) and didn't find any mention of it but it is the
aspect that the executive branch is formed from representatives of all
parties, a bit like a parliamentary committee is formed in other democracies.
That means that there isn't a real opposition/government split in their
parliament and government. This promotes centrist governance. Then the
referendums provide a way of correcting/opposition to the elected government.

I do think this style should be adopted wider into other democracies.

~~~
esarbe
Konkordanz is very important in Switzerland. A few years ago the SVP - the
biggest party by active membership in Switzerland - proclaimed to act as an
opposition party from that point forth.

They where thoroughly ridiculed; there is no place for an opposition party in
Switzerland, since all the major parties are part of the Executive
Directorate, where the seven seats of the directorate are apportioned vaguely
proportional to voter share (although there's a log of haggling involved and
you need to get the minor parties to agree to chip in, since the Directorate
is confirmed by the Parliament).

I do also think that it would be helpful to adopt similar power-sharing
directorates instead of presidential systems where one party dominates and the
other parties try to sabotage everything they do. Switzerland's system
involves a lot of bickering and can be slow sometimes, but I do think it
better than the back-and-forth of presidential democracies.

~~~
wirrbel
I'm German so I live in a democracy with proportional representation and
coalition governments. For the last years we had a coalition between labour
and conservatives, with conservatives being the larger party. That setup was
kind of the result of fragmentation in the political spectrum, that makes
forming a "polar" government (left/right) a lot more difficult. Overall this
center-government is quite popular, but sometimes gets a little lost on
individual issues where referendum might help. And getting all parties
included into that coalition government (that would be the Konkordanz setup
roughly) seems like a no-brainer to me.

I think for years I was sceptical of direct democracy elements due to really
bad decisions having been made in referendums across the globe. But nowadays I
feel like it might also have to do with the lack of frequence in referendums.
I.e. the Brexit-referendum was the rare occasion of a referendum, thus a lot
of other issues unloaded in that referendum. If more referendums on various
policies had been conducted before, the Brexit referendum might have turned
out differently due to a reduced overall frustration about participation in
policy-decision making.

Counterexample might be the state of california with many direct-democratic
elements and regular ballot votes on many issues. I don't see it generating a
lot of cooperative behaviour among the elected officials in california.

~~~
esarbe
I agree; you cannot expect the voters to just once make a decision and then
get it right.

The Brexit referendum is for me the worst possible example of how to do direct
democracy; facultative with a vague question and once-in-a-lifetime. That's
just not going to work. If a referendum is facultative, why even bother? If it
is a vague question, what exactly voting are they for and if it is once-in-a-
lifetime, how can you expect the people to actually vote on the issue at hand
instead of just making a protest vote?

For a direct democracy to be working properly (and I don't propose that it's
working properly in Switzerland!) you need to have an engaged populate that
has built up a culture of participation, that know these referendums will have
an impact and that their decision will not just be overruled by the political
elite.

I don't know much about the political situation in the state of California.
But honestly; the political system in the U.S.A to me seems just plain broken
at this point in time.

------
jeffrallen
When I arrived in Switzerland, my in-laws would shush me if I made noise
during the television referendum debates. Now I shush my kids if they make
noise!

My wife and I also ask their opinions before formulating the family's votes.

I'm looking forward to future installments. I'm a naturalized citizen and I
learned things from the writer!

------
rumcajz
Author here: At multiple places people pointed out that there are elements of
the system missing from the article. Please note that there's going to be part
II. (on decentralizaton, subsibiarity principle etc.) and part III. (on
concordant democracy, magic formula, collegiality principle etc.)

~~~
PostPlummer
As a Papierli-Schweizer let me thank you for the most comprehensive &
understandable description of the Swiss system I have come across.

I am truly appreciate for the time and effort it most have taken you and I am
looking forward to your part II & III.

------
mFixman
There must be something more to Swiss efficiency than referenda. The article
puts the case of the Jurassic question, which most of the Bernese government
opposed but was ultimately gone to a referendum. In many other countries there
would be nothing preventing the executive from just ignoring this question and
never putting it to a referendum, even if that's the law.

In a way, lack of corruption and high level political participation are what
makes the referenda work, not the other way around.

------
viburnum
I think the rotating executive is the most interesting aspect of Swiss
politics.

~~~
RajuVarghese
And the fact that they are expected to "speak with one voice".

~~~
underlines
Which forces them to find consensus.

~~~
chrisandchris
I does not force them to find consensus, but if you‘re the minority you just
have to „accept“ your loss and do as the majorities optinion were you‘re
opinion. Which makes - imo - an oppisiotion useless, which is a good thing
(you can‘t block progress if you don‘t agree).

~~~
CaptainZapp
Actually, no!

An important part of the Swiss system is that the winner doesn't take all, but
that compromise is actively thought.

Sure, if you're on the losing side you'll have to accept defeat.

But the referendums ensure that the majority can't just badger the losers
anyway they like.

Case in point: About 10 years ago there was a quite massive shift to the
right. After which the liberals and the popular party tried to implement a
rather neo-liberal agenda.

Let's just say it didn't quite work out.

------
xtiansimon
> “ The canton publishes a handbook for each ballot, which explains, in quite
> a detail, including graphs, maps and tables, what each referendum is about.“

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and particularly in Alameda County. We
received in the mail a government publication for each election. This includes
statements for and against, and/or from each candidate.

Today I’m living in the greater NYC area, and particularly in Nassau Co. I’m
not especially political, but I have worked for the Board of Elections at my
local polling place (fair and free elections!) I frequent my public library.
And there is nothing like this publication here.

It’s shocking how much work I have to do here to get any information on the
issues and candidates which is not published in a newspaper I have to buy.

------
ipnon
It's like a 4th branch of government, the people themselves have the power to
check and balance the government and legislature. The government moderates the
power of the peoples' direct democracy through a protracted, formal, and open
process of bringing a referendum from introduction to ballot. The legislature
is pressured always to move towards the center, because any step out of line
will turn into a political disaster through a referendum overruling them.

------
novok
We kind of have the same direct referendum system in California. But I get the
distinct impression it's lead to a lot of brain dead things, like prop 13:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition#Criticisms)

------
kensai
"Palace of Nations, the headquarters of UN, is located in Geneva and was
located there for a long time even before Switzerland has become a member."

It is not THE HQ. Just one of them. NY is the first in precedence.

------
JSavageOne
Fascinating read. As an American, I've always been curious about the Swiss
political system ever since I traveled the world and met a lot of Swiss
people, and was shocked that unlike in my home country, they generally seemed
satisfied with their government. Don't get me wrong - nobody is totally
satisfied with their government, but compared to the anger and jadedness me
and most of my fellow Americans have always felt about our government, it was
a shock to me. 7 presidents, referendums, 11 parties with at least one seat -
Switzerland sounds like a great case study in politics, especially since the
country is so culturally diverse with 4 national languages.

It looks like the referendum system has had a hugely positive effect, mostly
because it's a real-time check on their representatives' power since citizens
can directly change the law, forcing representatives to respect the interests
of the population. In the U.S, our only recourse as citizens is to vote for
one of the Democratic or Republican party candidates every 2-6 years (Senate
elections are every 6 years), and being locked into a two-party system means
the parties tend to gravitate towards the status quo. Ultimately referendums
result in more power in the people, as well as a more politically active and
educated citizenry as opposed to power being delegated to a relatively elite
political class.

The following passage stood out to me:

> Back in 1917 Switzerland used to use majority system in the parliamentary
> elections. This led to a situation where the Liberal Democrats got only
> 40.8% of the vote, but 54.5% of the seats in parliament. The absolute
> majority allowed them to pass the laws, regardless of the will of the 59.2%
> who voted for other parties.

> Needless to say, Liberal Democrats torpedoed every attempt to replace the
> majority voting system by a proportional one. If the instrument of popular
> initiatives was not available, it would be a dead end. The voters would have
> to wait until Liberal Democrats lose some of their voter support. But even
> then, thanks to the majority system, an absolute majority in parliament
> could be won by another party, who would again find it difficult to abolish
> the system that brought it to power.

> General dissatisfaction with the state of affairs led to the launch of the
> popular initiative "For a proportional system of elections to the National
> Council" in 1918 which succeeded with 66.8% votes in favor.

This is a prime example of what would otherwise be a permanent government
failure being rectified by the referendum system. Only the referendum system
can fix a problem that persists because it is against the majority lawmakers'
interests to fix it. It seems that voting rules in general should not be
decided by lawmakers because they are incapable of voting against their own
self-interest.

This is why despite all the complaints in the U.S. about the electoral
college, winner-take all elections, gerrymandering, and being locked into a
two-party system, nothing will every change since fixing the problem will
always be against the interests of the majority party. Referendum seems to be
the only solution here. Not that referendum guarantees change either, but it's
much easier to vote against the party system as a citizen than as a party
member who lives in and has benefited from the system. Expecting lawmakers to
vote in the public good is like expecting CEOs to vote themselves a fair
salary.

I was also impressed at the extent to which the public is educated on both
sides of the referendum, with all sides having a chance at fair
representation. Hard to imagine this kind of neutrality in the U.S. This is
also made much easier by the fact that referendums must focus on a single
matter, rather than conflating multiple unrelated issues (reducing military
spending + increasing spending on social services).

It's amazing that past referendums included votes on universal basic income
(2016) and full reserve banking (2018), both very forward thinking policies
that haven't even been in the public debate in the U.S. except for basic
income thanks to Andrew Yang's presidential run. Whereas the U.S. lags behind
the world politically, unable to fix problems that Americans have been
complaining about for decades like the skyrocketing cost of healthcare and
university, countries like Switzerland have their act together and are
pioneering forward into the future.

As an American, I'm completely in favor of tearing down our system and
replacing it with something like the Swiss's. Direct democracy is the only
true form of democracy, and representative democracy is like the halfway point
between real democracy and monarchy. It's sad that representative democracy
has been conflated with democracy, when it doesn't actually give the citizens
the power to do anything other than vote for a new Democratic or Republican
party representative every couple years. It's no wonder Americans are so
dissatisfied and jaded with their government and rioting on the streets.

------
Tainnor
I grew up in Switzerland and left the country about 10 years ago. There's a
lot to admire about the Swiss political system. However, I feel there are also
substantial flaws with it that the author fails to address. Not everything in
Swiss politics is rosy.

One of the biggest issues, I find, is that there is no constitutional
oversight e.g. in form of a court. This not only leads to things like minarets
being explicitly forbidden by the constitution (!) even though at the time of
that initiative there were... 3 minarets in all of Switzerland. It also leads
to a lot of issues when the government has to deal with contradictory
requirements. The mass immigration initiative by the SVP was a great example:
implementing it literally would have meant cancelling a lot of international
contracts, which nobody really wanted. In the end, I think they reached some
weird compromise solution (I had long left the country by then), but nobody
can argue that that's the way the law was "intended" (and indeed, IIRC, the
SVP tried to land another initiative that would have required the government
to implement the first initiative literally... I'm not even sure what kind of
legal sense that is supposed to make; thankfully, that initiative was
rejected).

In that sense, it's not true that the constitution is "unambiguous". The
government still has to draft specific laws according to new articles in the
constitution and there's still much leeway there.

I also disagree that Switzerland is not polarised. It's true that the system
itself, with a government involving all the major parties, acts as a stability
mechanism, but the SVP has been trying to break that stability for years and
years now, mounting attack after attack at the established consensus by using
the kind of right-wing populism that has now become popular in other parts of
the world as well. One particularly pernicious instance was when they were
trying to hold the political system hostage in 2007, because the parliament
didn't re-elect one of the SVP government members (Christoph Blocher). Blocher
was thought to be intolerable by many, so they elected another SVP member,
Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf, instead. However, the SVP simply proclaimed that they
wouldn't accept this and that if Schlumpf were to accept the vote, she would
be expelled from her own party. It turned out that it was impossible for the
SVP to just expel Schlumpf, though, so they had to expel the whole cantonal
section that she belonged to, which I just find insane. Schlumpf went on to be
a quite respected government member, but the SVP wouldn't stop whining for
years about how the government wasn't representing the political parties
anymore, even though they had created that situation completely on their own.
In the end, Schlumpf abdicated after some years and they elected another SVP
member that was slightly more tolerable.

Finally, we also have to look at voting participation, which is very low in
Switzerland. I believe this comes partially from the fact that it's just too
exhausting to have to keep up with dozens of referenda and initiatives each
year, especially when they overwhelmingly get rejected. I do think that the
numbers of signatures needed to start an initiative or referendum should be
increased; I think it's currently at 100k which in this day and age means that
everyone and their dog can make the people vote about something totally
insane.

~~~
rumcajz
There's going to be a long section about the Blocher case in part III.
However, honest question: Do you see SVP succeeding in polarizing the society?
How exactly? Have the friends voting for SVP started treating you as an enemy?
Do you fear expressing your opinion at particular places? Etc.

~~~
Tainnor
Sorry for the late answer.

Judging from the kinds of examples you give (fear of expressing one's own
opinion etc.), I'm thinking that you might be talking about a level of
polarisation that I mostly associate with the US currently. That's certainly
not what is going on in Switzerland, but it's also not what is going on in
many other parts of the world, so I don't think "not as bad as the US" is a
sufficient criterion for "not polarised".

But the SVP does consistently put up posters such as this one:
[https://img.nzz.ch/2019/8/19/a8db938f-4e3a-4eb4-9eec-31102df...](https://img.nzz.ch/2019/8/19/a8db938f-4e3a-4eb4-9eec-31102df04293.jpeg?width=560&fit=crop&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=2696,4024,x685,y0)
("should we allow liberals and 'nice people' to destroy Switzerland?")

Or this one: [https://www.sozialarchiv.ch/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/04_So...](https://www.sozialarchiv.ch/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/04_Sozarch_F_5123-Pe-123.jpg) ("This is what liberals
want")

Or:
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/1lgJnhTI6CNiyT7h_-8D...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/1lgJnhTI6CNiyT7h_-8Dmj3lKnHVD3EFFL_zdP6fifxbzT7an16ftPCRJhGHyzESjFc_S4wgdGlyJOSgN0GmM1_eeJnq5Ocok8o)
("free-for-all? no")

All of these examples (and many, many more, going back over decades) attempt
to paint the political opposition as subhuman and as selling out the country
to "bad people", and don't forget: this is the most powerful party in
Switzerland (though, to be fair, in Switzerland with its multi-party system
that doesn't mean more than 25-30%).

There are also numerous examples of the SVP using the same sort of language
and imagery when referring to immigrants, muslims, etc., but while equally
repulsive, I'll grant you that it's not an example of polarisation
necessarily.

By contrast, I now live in Germany, and before the rise of the far-right AfD
party just a couple of years ago, this sort of rhetoric and imagery would have
been completely unimaginable. Even now, the AfD is politically isolated and
its politics, language and imagery are reviled pretty much across the
political spectrum, whereas in Switzerland, the SVP has succeeded in
"normalising" this sort of political discourse over decades.

------
singhrac
The title reminded me of the late SlateStarCodex's "more than you ever wanted
to know" blog posts, which were pretty informative. The one on melatonin was
particularly useful, I think.

~~~
rumcajz
"More than you ever wanted to know" is a great name for an article format,
where a single topic is explored in depth. I don't think there's any other
term with that meaning in English, except, maybe, "monograph", but that
doesn't make such a nice title.

------
Bx6667
There are laws to prevent felons from having guns. Most people who murder with
guns are felons. Some people want to make more laws to restrict gun ownership
even further. So in the future maybe people who haven’t gotten a training
certificate and who have not passed various tests cannot own a gun. In this
case, people who carry around pistols might be seen almost as an extension of
the police force who only become active in the most extreme situations where
police are not available, because they are so thoroughly screened and trained.
The man who head-shifted a terrorist in a Texas church comes to mind.

In this scenario, the number of guns carried by criminals would stay the same.
And the amount of people murdered by guns will be the same. You know why?
Because stop and frisk is racist. According to everyone, stopping people for 2
minutes to check them for guns is abhorrent, racist and evil. So criminals
will always have guns in this country. There is no reason to pass laws one way
or another.

Some say that stop and frisk is unconstitutional. I think I agree with this.
So it follows that it is embedded in the constitution that criminals will be
carrying around pistols. There is no changing this. I think that the only
reasonable response is to allow ordinary people who are not criminals, not
obviously insane and etc to carry pistols. It’s written in the constitution
that we are allowed to do something like that. So if liberals want to be
constitutionalists about stop and frisk, then conservatives have the right to
be constitutionalists about carrying guns. If criminals are allowed to carry
guns in practice then it is only reasonable to let their victims carry guns
too.

~~~
xorfish
How is this connected to the post?

~~~
082349872349872
In the context of this post, "the constitution" would be:

[https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-
compilation/19995395/...](https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-
compilation/19995395/index.html)

------
Bx6667
Didn’t read the article but I met a Swiss guy at a hostel the other day. He
told me how citizens can prompt a vote on almost any issue — almost a direct
democracy, in his words. He said that a vote was successfully prompted to
limit the gap between the salaries of ceos and low level employees. It was
voted down. My only remark was that if the United States had a system like
that, the country would promptly destroy itself.

~~~
xorfish
How would the country destroy itself?

~~~
Bx6667
By voting through feel-good proposals that are ultimately misinformed and
destructive. It’s happening anyway through our indirect democracy but at a
slower rate.

~~~
xorfish
That is not what is happening in Switzerland. There isn't reallya reason why
ot would play out differently in the USA.

The beginning might be turbulent, but that should cha.ge after a few years

~~~
evilos
I would guess the Swiss population is generally more educated on average
compared to the American public, which to be fair is easier to achieve with a
population of 9M vs 328M. A sufficiently educated public is a requirement for
a more direct democracy to have desirable results.

America really needs an education system overhaul, teachers are often paid
close to fast food restaurant staff levels of wages.

~~~
soco
If you have a working education system, it will work exactly the same for 9
and for 300 million people. Its not about size but about the approach.

