I do not like the AFD for obvious reasons. However, I do agree with them on this, but for different reasons.
I know why I like Swiss direct democracy. They don’t want to do it for the same reasons. An undereducated populous is easier to control. Which at the moment Germany kind of is.
Using the Brexit vote as an example is exactly the opposite of what direct democracy achieves. Most Brits now regret Brexit, and it had nothing to do with the referendum itself, but more that people were unhappy.
There was a thread on here a few days ago why direct democracy works in Switzerland. It’s because we don’t use votes to punish the government or parties. We actually think through the consequences of the actions of something.
And unlike in other countries, when a referendum asks you something, it isn’t exaggerated. Many studies show that what people believe politicians will do is not what they are saying they will do. They usually believe it’s less extreme than what the Politicians are saying. Which makes sense. However, we have less of that in Switzerland since if you are asked, “Do you want to leave Schengen?”, there is no room for interpretation. Its no they won’t do that. No. It’s a binary choice you make.
Any country that starts direct democracy will struggle with this in the beginning, since people have trained themselves to discount the levels of extreme of Politics. Therefor, something like “Do we leave the EU?” would likely more easily pass.
Ah yes let’s create a system that will be prone to abuse in a country that is already under massive digital agitprop attack by the Russians and the Americans. Absolutely nothing will go wrong.
These people are looking for ways to entice their population to vote against their own interests even more.
Bad idea.
The only reasons Swiss-style direct democracy works in Switzerland is because of the consensus culture where the government representatives are quasi-detatched from their respective parties once they’re in office, and the fact that power is devolved. Any time people from other countries are griping about the need for direct democracy in their own countries it’s always some unitary statist fuck wanting to impose majority mob rule on everyone in said country. Which is uh, not the same thing.
Because it‘s the best model in the world.
I voted for AfD – as I have both German and Swiss citizenship. 💙
It’s a great system but very hard to implement, especially in a country so much larger than switzerland. But yea, direct democracy could have helped stop / resolve the issues that caused AfD’s creation and continued growth by forcing establishment parties to adress the growing concerns. So yea I agree with them.
It feels like the German politicians are often more concerned about correcting and silencing the opinions of the citizens that are inconvenient, rather than actually trying to represent it’s populace.
Keine Ahnung was das bringen soll. Direkte Wahl und Initativen sind auf Landes- und Gemeindeebene möglich, werden aber kaum gebraucht. Wenn Politiker angenommene Initativen (mit Ansage) ignorieren, gibt es weder innerhalb der Zivilgesellschaft noch bei den Medien grossen Widerstand. Beides spricht nicht gerade dafür, dass Deutsche eine direktere Demokratie wollen. Auf Bundesebene gibt es eine Opposition und das Ständemehr birgt die Gefahr einer Nord-Südblockade, und einer West-Ostblockade. Zusätzlich müsste man den Bundesrat umbauen. Und schlussendlich für was?: Das System funktioniert für ein fast 90 Millionen Volk eigentlich ganz gut; zuminest scheint das Hauptargument der AfD auch nicht ein Demokratiedefizit zu sein.
Politische Systeme sind historisch gewachsene Gebilde, die man nicht einfach so mal ändern kann.
First of all: our systems of semidirect democracy cannot function in a parliamentary system like in Germany. Why? If a PI gets approved by the voters but the government doesn’t want to implement it, they can just decide the interpretation of how to implement the new constitutional amendment. This would lead to the government more or less ignoring any decision made by the PI.
The other thing you need to understand is that AfD hates democracy with passion but they can’t simply remove democratic freedoms and human rights by themselves because nobody wants to govern with them, so in order to have their disingenuous agenda implemented, they want to surpass the other parties and just try to fool the people into voting on stuff they want to implement to establish a fascist dictatorship.
And no, it’s not possible to simply vote to stop immigration as we have seen countless times in Switzerland already.
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Even a broken clock is right two times a day.
Fuck AFD, keep direct democracy.
I do not like the AFD for obvious reasons. However, I do agree with them on this, but for different reasons.
I know why I like Swiss direct democracy. They don’t want to do it for the same reasons. An undereducated populous is easier to control. Which at the moment Germany kind of is.
Using the Brexit vote as an example is exactly the opposite of what direct democracy achieves. Most Brits now regret Brexit, and it had nothing to do with the referendum itself, but more that people were unhappy.
There was a thread on here a few days ago why direct democracy works in Switzerland. It’s because we don’t use votes to punish the government or parties. We actually think through the consequences of the actions of something.
And unlike in other countries, when a referendum asks you something, it isn’t exaggerated. Many studies show that what people believe politicians will do is not what they are saying they will do. They usually believe it’s less extreme than what the Politicians are saying. Which makes sense. However, we have less of that in Switzerland since if you are asked, “Do you want to leave Schengen?”, there is no room for interpretation. Its no they won’t do that. No. It’s a binary choice you make.
Any country that starts direct democracy will struggle with this in the beginning, since people have trained themselves to discount the levels of extreme of Politics. Therefor, something like “Do we leave the EU?” would likely more easily pass.
Link to the thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/1isn260/how_did_swiss_learn_to_prioritize_longterm/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/1isn260/how_did_swiss_learn_to_prioritize_longterm/)
Ah yes let’s create a system that will be prone to abuse in a country that is already under massive digital agitprop attack by the Russians and the Americans. Absolutely nothing will go wrong.
These people are looking for ways to entice their population to vote against their own interests even more.
Bad idea.
The only reasons Swiss-style direct democracy works in Switzerland is because of the consensus culture where the government representatives are quasi-detatched from their respective parties once they’re in office, and the fact that power is devolved. Any time people from other countries are griping about the need for direct democracy in their own countries it’s always some unitary statist fuck wanting to impose majority mob rule on everyone in said country. Which is uh, not the same thing.
Because it‘s the best model in the world.
I voted for AfD – as I have both German and Swiss citizenship. 💙
It’s a great system but very hard to implement, especially in a country so much larger than switzerland. But yea, direct democracy could have helped stop / resolve the issues that caused AfD’s creation and continued growth by forcing establishment parties to adress the growing concerns. So yea I agree with them.
It feels like the German politicians are often more concerned about correcting and silencing the opinions of the citizens that are inconvenient, rather than actually trying to represent it’s populace.
Keine Ahnung was das bringen soll. Direkte Wahl und Initativen sind auf Landes- und Gemeindeebene möglich, werden aber kaum gebraucht. Wenn Politiker angenommene Initativen (mit Ansage) ignorieren, gibt es weder innerhalb der Zivilgesellschaft noch bei den Medien grossen Widerstand. Beides spricht nicht gerade dafür, dass Deutsche eine direktere Demokratie wollen. Auf Bundesebene gibt es eine Opposition und das Ständemehr birgt die Gefahr einer Nord-Südblockade, und einer West-Ostblockade. Zusätzlich müsste man den Bundesrat umbauen. Und schlussendlich für was?: Das System funktioniert für ein fast 90 Millionen Volk eigentlich ganz gut; zuminest scheint das Hauptargument der AfD auch nicht ein Demokratiedefizit zu sein.
Politische Systeme sind historisch gewachsene Gebilde, die man nicht einfach so mal ändern kann.
First of all: our systems of semidirect democracy cannot function in a parliamentary system like in Germany. Why? If a PI gets approved by the voters but the government doesn’t want to implement it, they can just decide the interpretation of how to implement the new constitutional amendment. This would lead to the government more or less ignoring any decision made by the PI.
The other thing you need to understand is that AfD hates democracy with passion but they can’t simply remove democratic freedoms and human rights by themselves because nobody wants to govern with them, so in order to have their disingenuous agenda implemented, they want to surpass the other parties and just try to fool the people into voting on stuff they want to implement to establish a fascist dictatorship.
And no, it’s not possible to simply vote to stop immigration as we have seen countless times in Switzerland already.
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