Well that depends how you define lobbying. I live in Switzerland and referendums very frequently have large advertising campaigns attached to them - sometimes u

Well that depends how you define lobbying. I live in Switzerland and referendums very frequently have large advertising campaigns attached to them - sometimes unopposed (that is, there is no noticeable advertising campaign for one of the options). There is definitely money in politics. Of course that is not necessarily a bad thing. The adverts alert people to an upcoming vote they may find interesting, primarily. Also Switzerland is notoriously bureaucratic. Even very simple tasks require visits to one of the many, many small government offices that dot the landscape and each interaction always costs hundreds of dollars ... even when the act itself is basically "print out a piece of paper and give it to you". But I fully agree that direct democracy creates better quality of government in general.