vote.org

The People's Voice - The Economist 8/12/99

Read the full article..

There are others at the Economist web site but you must pay for them. Search for "direct democracy"

Happiness is a Warm Vote - The Economist 3/15/99

Read the full article..

There are others at the Economist web site but you must pay for them. Search for "direct democracy"

How Far Can You Trust the People? - The Economist 8/15/98

Read the full article..

There are others at the Economist web site but you must pay for them. Search for "direct democracy"

Lex Populi - The Economist 5/28/98

Read the full article..

There are others at the Economist web site but you must pay for them. Search for "direct democracy"

The arguments that won't wash - The Economist 12/21/96

A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! (part 5 of 8)

"Most objections to direct democracy are, when you look closely, objections to democracy"

BRIAN BEEDHAM

AH YES, the objectors say at once: perhaps the Swiss can do these things, but that does not mean anybody else can; the Swiss, you see, have a unique gift for direct democracy. To which the answer is: come off it. There is nothing special about the Swiss. They are a perfectly ordinary mixture of west-central European peoples (and the fact that they are a mixture makes it harder, not easier, for them to run their country in this way). They too yawn at the blearier aspects of politics; the turnout goes down with a bump when there is nothing of particular interest on the referendum list. They too get sudden bees in the bonnet; it was the Swiss, in 1989, who asked themselves whether they should abolish their army, and found 35.6% of themselves saying yes. Here are no models of zealously dutiful civic rectitude.

Why the time for change has come - The Economist 12/21/96

A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! (part 7 of 8)

"In an equal and electronic world, the unequal old steam-engine won’t work"

BRIAN BEEDHAM

THE argument for direct democracy is not just a matter of beating off the mostly unconvincing objections its opponents throw at it. The bigger part of the argument consists of pointing out that the world has changed hugely since the other version of democracy, the representative sort, first came into widespread use in the 19th century. These changes make the vote-every-few-years brand look increasingly unworkable, and strengthen the claim to workability of the emerging alternative.

So long as it's clear who's in charge - The Economist 12/21/96

A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! (part 2 of 8)

Take Switzerland for both a model and a warning

BRIAN BEEDHAM

THE first lesson from Switzerland is that direct democracy is hard work. The second is that, though it makes politicians less important than they like to be, it does not remove the need for an intelligent parliament; the system works most efficiently when politicians stop assuming they know best, but do their proper job with modest zeal.

This proper job, as with any parliament, is to sit down, discuss the problems of the day, and propose solutions for them. The difference in a direct democracy is that the parliament's solutions are not necessarily the last word in the matter until the next general election, which may be years away. In Switzerland, 50,000 signatures on a petition, a bit over 1% of the current total of qualified voters, are enough to haul any new countrywide law before a vote of the whole people. Twice that number of signatures will put a brand-new idea for a law to the people's decision, even if parliament wants nothing to do with it. Because of a Swiss quirk, new federal laws coming from outside parliament have to take the form of amendments to the constitution, with the result that Switzerland's constitution has come to look like an over-stuffed cupboard; but there is no reason why the same process could not put such new laws on the ordinary statute-book, as happens in many American states and in most of Switzerland's own cantons.

Life at the democratic roots - The Economist 12/21/96

A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! (part 4 of 8)

The places where you realise what a sense of community means

KILCHBERG, a community of 7,000 people, sits n a hillside that slopes sharply down to the southern shore of the lake of Zurich. It would not be fair to call it a typical specimen of the 3,000-odd Gemainden (communes in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, comuni in the Italian part) which are the foundation of the country’s politics. Most of its people are comfortably well-off, many of them refugees from the higher taxes of the next-door community, the city of Zurich; less than a quarter are native citizens of Kilchberg. Only about 100 of the 7,00 are employed. From the graveyard of the Reformed church at the top of the hill the mortal remains of Thomas Mann and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer look out on a summer’s day at the silent snows of the mountains of eastern Switzerland.

The underclass test - The Economist 12/21/96

A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! (part 6 of 8)

The challenge the voters must not duck

THE serious worry is whether deciding things by a vote of the whole people is the best way of looking after an unhappy minority of the people. The worry grows when one particular bunch of unhappy people looks like getting stuck indefinitely at the bottom of the pile. The advocates of direct democracy have to ask themselves whether their preferred form of government can cope with the emergence of a permanent underclass.

Of course, unhappy minorities are a problem in any sort of democracy. Whether they are defined by the smallness of their income or the colour of their skin, they tend to vote less frequently than other people do. In a representative democracy, they therefore elect less than their fair share of the members of parliament, and so their complaints have less chance of getting listened to.

The end of a dividing line - The Economist 12/21/96

A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! (part 8 of 8)

BRIAN BEEDHAM

IT WOULD be wrong, however, to rest the case for direct democracy on utilitarian grounds alone. To vote directly on the issues of the day is more efficient than to delegate the issue-deciding job to a bunch of representatives, because it almost certainly provides more people with more of what they want at little or no extra cost. But it also does something else. By giving ordinary people more responsibility, it encourages them to behave more responsibly; by giving them more power, it teaches them how to exercise power. It makes them better citizens, and to that extent better human beings. It improves the producers as well as the product.