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> it's a representational democracy Switzerland is a direct democracy, not just a representative (i.e. indirect) democracy. In the present case the ECHR is obv

by Rochus 3y ago

> it's a representational democracy Switzerland is a direct democracy, not just a representative (i.e. indirect) democracy. In the present case the ECHR is obviously misused with very dubious arguments. The fact that the ECHR does not put a stop to such abuse will not exactly improve its acceptance among the Swiss voters.

myrion 3y ago
No, Switzerland is at most a semi-direct democracy. We don't vote on every last decision the government takes, after all - we have a bicameral parliament and an executive branch for those! We just also have votations on a lot of things.
- Rochus 3y ago
  > No, Switzerland is at most a semi-direct democracy. .. We don't vote on every last decision the government takes Trotzdem nennt man das "direkte Demokratie". Wir hatten noch so etwas wie "Staatskunde" in der Schule. Die Jungen haben das heute anscheinend nicht mehr. Der Punkt ist, dass das Volk per Initiative etc. bei Bedarf eingreifen kann, also nicht nur dem Parlament aus der Ferne zusehen darf. Siehe auch https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/de/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/de/home/politik-ge....
  - hnbad 3y ago
    You can call it what you want but even Wikipedia makes a clear distinction between a "direct democracy" without representatives and "instruments for direct democracy in an other representative system": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direkte_Demokratie https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direkte_Demokratie Of course your "Staatskunde" lesson in school may have handwaved that distinction because the former by definition is stateless and the purpose is to distinguish between the Swiss governance model and other representative democracies, not doing a deep dive on all forms of governance. We had "political science" lessons in school and they were largely about the structure of our own system (e.g. one exam literally involved adjusting the federal budget), maybe with some excursions to contrast it with e.g. the US but I don't think we ever learned about delegative democracy, let alone anarchist, minarchist or Marxist theories. Because it was a public school in Germany, the German model of the "social market economy" was never challenged and implied to be the best possible system because it is written into our constitution. Saying a representative democracy that makes use of instruments for direct democracy is direct democracy is a bit like saying a social market economy (i.e. a market economy with a state-provided, limited, tax-funded social welfare system) is socialism. One may have political motivations to label it as such (either to make it more or less appealing) but it muddies definitions by conflating "pars pro toto", i.e. a part and the whole.
    - Rochus 3y ago
      It's a well defined and established terminology, regardless of opinions.
      - hnbad 3y ago
        Yeah, the definition is one of several and I explained why it's not a good one, regardless of how widely it is used. That you prefer this definition over others does not invalidate them - that's literally just your own opinion.
        Rochus 3y ago
        See https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system/direkte-demokratie.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-ge...
        hnbad 3y ago
        That's a website of the Swiss government calling its system of governance a direct democracy. I'm talking about political theory, not the Swiss government's publications about itself nor the Swiss curriculum for "Staatskunde" lessons in schools. I understand that Switzerland calls itself a direct democracy. I understand that many other representative democracies refer to the Swiss form of governance that way. I understand that this language may even have ended up in laws and legal interpretations, but that doesn't change that "direct democracy" means something very specific (i.e. literally everyone voting on every issue, often in the form of proxy voting or delegation) in political theory. I'm not saying Switzerland does not offer more voter participation than other representative democracies. It is a lot closer to direct democracy than any of its neighbors or fellow European democracies. But it's not a direct democracy. Think of direct democracy like functional programming: there are plenty of programming languages that were originally conceived of as procedural or object-oriented or class-based that claim to support "functional programming" and some are actually very good at it but that does not make them functional programming languages in the same way as languages designed as functional programming languages from the start. Switzerland started out as a representative democracy and introduced and strengthened its participatory instruments over time to behave more like a direct democracy (check out the PDF at the end of the page you linked, it even uses the same narrative of Athens and the French revolution used by other representative democracies to explain their origins). That does not make it a direct democracy, it just makes it a representative democracy with exceptionally good participatory instruments. It makes perfect sense for Switzerland to describe itself as a direct democracy when it wants to contrast itself with all the other representative democracies because those instruments borrowed from direct democracy set it apart. But that's like Ruby bragging about being a functional programming language by comparing itself to Python and Java because Haskell and Lisp are not part of the conversation.
hnbad 3y ago
Semantics aside, this is a red herring. Whether you call it a "direct" democracy or a "representative" democracy, it's a governance system based on majority votes, not consent. Going through the courts is the correct approach in this case if they believed there was a criminal injustice that could not be remedied through electoral means. As the legal basis in this case is the ECHR, not Swiss law, taking this to the ECHR court is the logical conclusion. You can disagree with the ECHR. Not every country is a signatory of the ECHR. Not every country is a signatory of the equivalent UN convention either - notably the US is also not a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of children and there are many people in signatory countries who don't seem to agree with it either. But as long as the Swiss government does not remove itself from the ECHR, it is subject to it. You can't have it both ways - or rather, you can and Switzerland does as it hasn't signed protocols 4 and 12 (pertaining free movement and discrimination respectively) and has only signed but not ratified protocol 1.
- Rochus 3y ago
  > it's a governance system based on majority votes, not consent. ... Going through the courts is the correct approach in this case This is undemocratic nonsense. The ECHR has well defined concerns. Even the ECHR recognizes the separation of powers, and the court has clear jurisdiction in this system. It is not the court's task to expand the scope of the EHCR. At least that's how it was when I was studying law.

by Rochus 3y ago

myrion 3y ago

No, Switzerland is at most a semi-direct democracy. We don't vote on every last decision the government takes, after all - we have a bicameral parliament and an executive branch for those! We just also have votations on a lot of things.

Rochus 3y ago
> No, Switzerland is at most a semi-direct democracy. .. We don't vote on every last decision the government takes Trotzdem nennt man das "direkte Demokratie". Wir hatten noch so etwas wie "Staatskunde" in der Schule. Die Jungen haben das heute anscheinend nicht mehr. Der Punkt ist, dass das Volk per Initiative etc. bei Bedarf eingreifen kann, also nicht nur dem Parlament aus der Ferne zusehen darf. Siehe auch https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/de/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/de/home/politik-ge....
- hnbad 3y ago
  You can call it what you want but even Wikipedia makes a clear distinction between a "direct democracy" without representatives and "instruments for direct democracy in an other representative system": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direkte_Demokratie https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direkte_Demokratie Of course your "Staatskunde" lesson in school may have handwaved that distinction because the former by definition is stateless and the purpose is to distinguish between the Swiss governance model and other representative democracies, not doing a deep dive on all forms of governance. We had "political science" lessons in school and they were largely about the structure of our own system (e.g. one exam literally involved adjusting the federal budget), maybe with some excursions to contrast it with e.g. the US but I don't think we ever learned about delegative democracy, let alone anarchist, minarchist or Marxist theories. Because it was a public school in Germany, the German model of the "social market economy" was never challenged and implied to be the best possible system because it is written into our constitution. Saying a representative democracy that makes use of instruments for direct democracy is direct democracy is a bit like saying a social market economy (i.e. a market economy with a state-provided, limited, tax-funded social welfare system) is socialism. One may have political motivations to label it as such (either to make it more or less appealing) but it muddies definitions by conflating "pars pro toto", i.e. a part and the whole.
  - Rochus 3y ago
    It's a well defined and established terminology, regardless of opinions.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      Yeah, the definition is one of several and I explained why it's not a good one, regardless of how widely it is used. That you prefer this definition over others does not invalidate them - that's literally just your own opinion.
      - Rochus 3y ago
        See https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system/direkte-demokratie.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-ge...
        hnbad 3y ago
        That's a website of the Swiss government calling its system of governance a direct democracy. I'm talking about political theory, not the Swiss government's publications about itself nor the Swiss curriculum for "Staatskunde" lessons in schools. I understand that Switzerland calls itself a direct democracy. I understand that many other representative democracies refer to the Swiss form of governance that way. I understand that this language may even have ended up in laws and legal interpretations, but that doesn't change that "direct democracy" means something very specific (i.e. literally everyone voting on every issue, often in the form of proxy voting or delegation) in political theory. I'm not saying Switzerland does not offer more voter participation than other representative democracies. It is a lot closer to direct democracy than any of its neighbors or fellow European democracies. But it's not a direct democracy. Think of direct democracy like functional programming: there are plenty of programming languages that were originally conceived of as procedural or object-oriented or class-based that claim to support "functional programming" and some are actually very good at it but that does not make them functional programming languages in the same way as languages designed as functional programming languages from the start. Switzerland started out as a representative democracy and introduced and strengthened its participatory instruments over time to behave more like a direct democracy (check out the PDF at the end of the page you linked, it even uses the same narrative of Athens and the French revolution used by other representative democracies to explain their origins). That does not make it a direct democracy, it just makes it a representative democracy with exceptionally good participatory instruments. It makes perfect sense for Switzerland to describe itself as a direct democracy when it wants to contrast itself with all the other representative democracies because those instruments borrowed from direct democracy set it apart. But that's like Ruby bragging about being a functional programming language by comparing itself to Python and Java because Haskell and Lisp are not part of the conversation.

hnbad 3y ago

Semantics aside, this is a red herring. Whether you call it a "direct" democracy or a "representative" democracy, it's a governance system based on majority votes, not consent. Going through the courts is the correct approach in this case if they believed there was a criminal injustice that could not be remedied through electoral means. As the legal basis in this case is the ECHR, not Swiss law, taking this to the ECHR court is the logical conclusion. You can disagree with the ECHR. Not every country is a signatory of the ECHR. Not every country is a signatory of the equivalent UN convention either - notably the US is also not a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of children and there are many people in signatory countries who don't seem to agree with it either. But as long as the Swiss government does not remove itself from the ECHR, it is subject to it. You can't have it both ways - or rather, you can and Switzerland does as it hasn't signed protocols 4 and 12 (pertaining free movement and discrimination respectively) and has only signed but not ratified protocol 1.

Rochus 3y ago
> it's a governance system based on majority votes, not consent. ... Going through the courts is the correct approach in this case This is undemocratic nonsense. The ECHR has well defined concerns. Even the ECHR recognizes the separation of powers, and the court has clear jurisdiction in this system. It is not the court's task to expand the scope of the EHCR. At least that's how it was when I was studying law.