Stephen Neitzke’s view of the
Swiss example as a basic model for the US:
The Swiss have pioneered a working, workable, national Direct
Democracy / representative government meld since 1891. They are one of the few
nations on the planet both economically and socially successful -- despite the
cultural diversity that requires four national languages. The Swiss are not the
oddballs of élite propaganda. They are pioneers.
The Swiss tandem success is something that the US cannot even
approach.
They have 3 branches of representative government -- legislative,
executive, judicial -- and a very strong civil society in which every citizen
has the politically equal power of one vote.
There is something very powerfully human about the "one
person, one vote" system. That something is legitimacy.
When the Swiss citizens vote to approve any ballot measure, their
approval occurs in a "double majority". That is, a majority of
citizens approve and, additionally, a majority of citizens in a majority of
states approve. The legitimacy of the double majority approval is undeniable.
Likewise, so is the legitimacy of any citizen vote negation of the ballot
question.
When the Swiss people act through initiative or referendum, they
act as a part of the nation's legislative power. But they have an automatic
advantage over the representative government legislature. Their approved civic
initiative writes law directly into their constitution. Constitutional law
there is, as it is everywhere, superior to statute law. Representative
government cannot pass or alter constitutional law. Representative government
can only pass or alter statute law. The automatic superiority of Swiss citizen
law is an admirable innovation. We can probably devise citizen-superior statute
law, but the Swiss experience shows us how to construct a system with the
proper failsafe for citizen law.
There is no need to have the citizenry vote on every proposed law.
Every act of the Swiss legislature is open to citizen review. They have a
90-day rule. If the citizens do not bring the very easy-to-do referendum
challenge to a legislatively passed law within 90 days, then the citizens have
-- constitutionally -- given their tacit consent to the law. No referendum means
a nationally accepted law.
I believe there are both historical and human psychological
grounds for paying attention to the successful Swiss model.
I believe we can improve on the Swiss model by (1) giving citizens
the power to recall the elections of any elected representative, (2) creating
citizen institutions (with online components) to record and protect citizen
business, and (3) integrating it more with representative government in terms
of executive veto (which could be overturned) and judicial review (to ensure
that individual and minority rights are protected in accord with the written
constitution against any majority action) -- while leaving the people as a
clearly defined sovereign, holding the nation's ultimate power.
But I purely believe that the Swiss system is basically sound and
that we need look no further into political theory to gain a well balanced,
responsive, and responsible system of governance.
There are 23 US states with approximately the same form of
governance as is held by the Swiss. The representative governments in those
states are, of course, as corporately controlled as is the US national
representative government -- a condition absent in Swiss governance. Citizens
in those US states have only rarely been able to completely work around the
corporate control that grips their representative governments. Still, there are
historical moments and trends in the governance of those states that speak to
the huge benefits of the tension between representative government and the fully
empowered, democratic civil society.
Civil society in a democracy is a remarkable and vastly underrated
creature. I feel that too many Direct Democracy advocates today do not give a
democracy's civil society anywhere near the credit that it is due. Having spent
29 adult years in 3 of the US states having initiative, referendum, and recall,
I can witness to the splendid political depth and flexibility of such civil
societies -- even when they have to work against corporate control of their
representative governments.
The Swiss political dynamic demonstrates the multilevel,
multifaceted powers of the Swiss civil society. A semi-close reading of one
book can tell you the story. It is Kris W. Kobach's 1993 book, "The
Referendum: Direct Democracy In Switzerland", published both in the US and
in England by Dartmouth. It's widely used in colleges and universities and is
internationally available.
There is no need to have a branch of government for news services.
Such a branch would be superfluous in a working democracy. Given political
equality among all citizens, and adequate regulation of corporations where
necessary, news media organizations would simply know how to behave. It is an
obvious benefit of the political dynamic that grows out of the Direct Democracy
/ representative government meld.
And there is no need to have a branch of government for attorney
generals. When the people can reach into any part of their representative
government to make corrections, representative government suddenly becomes much
more responsive. A Janet Reno, hiding the crimes of politicians from justice,
simply is not possible in those US states having recall when citizen outrage is
running high.
Sadly, in the US states having recall, the controlling
corporations and the corrupted representatives only have to hide out for a
short time following a public outrage. But that is only because the civil
societies in those states do not yet have citizen institutions to continually
observe and monitor the performance of their representative governments. Such
days are surely coming.