[pp.int.general] This year, I'm voting against representative democracy.

[Pat Maechler aka Valio]

Actually one can fetch the comments easily by wget, without having to
register as user.

Concerning the democracy questions, here's my reply to Bram
---
I'm a known pirate party advocate from Switzerland.
I highly value the direct democratic instruments here, even though I
think they're far from perfect. But I'd say there's also an overtly
different political culture in Switzerland concerning politics and
such a culture is certainly *not* adapted by a society within a
short-time span; this needs time and also a certain level of education
to avoid demagogues.
An example of the positive aspects: one is overtly eager to draft laws
that are as understandable and simple as possible (but not simpler),
as every law could be subject to a referendum. Unecessary legalese
terms are not helping citizens to have them understand what they're
supposed to do. So this is a good thing. There are others as well:
e.g. avoidance of questionable tug of war legislation (rather
concordance than a conflict democracy), the need for a good
argumentative basis for public expenses, a broad open discussion on
political issues among society (most people initiatives are turned
down, but they provide the value of softening dogmas).
What is missing IMO is that non-elected citizens are still a bit
excluded from a structured political discussion. Only the parliament
can provide alternative suggestions to an already handed in people
initiative. Thus there's still a good level of corporate lobbyism and
single-dimensioned ideological thinking. Citizens still need to push
into political parties to add to a certain debate, even if they may
just provide a valuable POV, which has nothing to do with common party
ideologies whatsoever. That is why I'm currently fighting for the
introduction of a delegative democracy ("liquid democracy").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_Democracy
---
or as Charly Pache (vice-presidet PP-CH) puts it
---
The problem lies probably more into lack of information among citizen,
corruption and corporate sponsors than into direct democracy itself.
---

-pat