I agree such a change is difficult, but I believe it's difficult precisely because it's currently not very democratic. Deeply direct democracy is self-sustaini

I agree such a change is difficult, but I believe it's difficult precisely because it's currently not very democratic. Deeply direct democracy is self-sustaining - people would agree to move over to a new system because it would give them more power than they have in the current parliamentary systems. The problem as far as I see is the current political class (parliamentarians and people in the executive branch), which would lose power. And since this is who currently has the power, and it's always nearly impossible to make somebody give up power, that's the reason why this won't happen. But Europe is in a state of crisis now, and maybe this crisis is great enough to motivate this class to move to a more open system. If you think about it, the current indirect democracy (with parliaments and the electoral college etc) is a remnant of a time when a decision took days to travel through the whole land, and to be reasonably fast and decisive, you had to have them. Thanks to the internet, we could even go past such direct democracies like Switzerland and allow each citizen to vote at each bill, or if she didn't want to spend the time, leave that decision to a parliamentarian of her choosing, but with the option to take power again or give it to a different parliamentarian at any moment. Now that is true democracy. No back-hand deals, and no favoritisms anymore.