Great article. I have always been a fan of Switzerland, and I agree that it is a much misunderstood nation. Since you are Swiss, I wonder what you think about a recent article that I wrote about your country. It makes many of the same points as your article:
Thank you - I like your article! You're almost a bigger shill for Switzerland than me 😃 I guess the only thing I would add is that there are many historical path dependencies between the points on your list. Eg in Geneva where I live there's the UN, commodity traders & mountains and in some convoluted ways they're all linked.
Fantastic! There is a massive difference between Switzerland and the Anglo Saxon system: in Switzerland there is system for power sharing. Elections are not about win or lose, but about your weight in a common government.
Switzerland is the most advanced form of “democracy beyond majoritarianism”
I also find your work quite interesting; as you know, forecasting is for me a critical element for a better governance.
Some of my ideas on governance began when I worked for the BIS in Basel, and saw the Swiss system personally: it was one of my most important formative experiences.
All my non technical work is in my EA forum Account, so you can have a look in the post titles and read if the theme looks interesting. Kind regards, Arturo.
I do not buy the Thiel technomonarchy at all, and I think the US could learn a lot from our sister republic, but there is one key difference: cultural homogeneity. I have a vague belief that it's extremely difficult to become a Swiss citizen, and as a result there is a rather long, continuous understanding of what it means to be Swiss though it evolves over time and creates its own factions. By contrast, the US is defined by heterogeneous culture, without many shared norms, especially post-1970s. The polarization is downstream of those trends, though the system exacerbates it and rewards ambitious politicians and polemicists for exploiting it. In so many ways, the US system is defined as building a system that can end zero-sum, blood-and-soil politics while still having a baseline identity of being an America with an overarching system that can accept multiple cultures.
It's arduous to become Swiss - you're definitely right on that. However, we're more a "national of will" than some Japanese type of cultural homogeneity. Something like 25% of residents are non-Swiss and something like 50% is either non-Swiss or has a recent migratory background and there is quite the cultural difference between language regions. So, we don't have federalism for completely different reasons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6stigraben However, fully agree that the Swiss model wouldn't fit America 1:1.
Wonderful piece here from Kevin. So good, in fact, that I need to read it again.
I don’t think there is any doubt that the American FPTP system is enabling/creating a highly polarized environment that leads…well…not to a place that we want to go.
I do have a question though. How exactly does the Swiss system work? I understand there are still parties and proportional representation, but there is also direct democracy. Which decisions are “directly” decided, and which are decided by elected representatives?
Thanks! So, the default for drafting legislation is a regular parliament. However, there is a popular vote if a) there is a constitutional change or b) the parliament accepts a law again which some group collects enough signatures form the population to hold a popular referendum on. On top of that the population can initiate novel legislation, if c) someone collects enough signatures within a specific time frame. (though something like 80-90% of popular initiatives are rejected by popular vote).
Great article. I have always been a fan of Switzerland, and I agree that it is a much misunderstood nation. Since you are Swiss, I wonder what you think about a recent article that I wrote about your country. It makes many of the same points as your article:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/switzerland-a-most-unusual-european
Thank you - I like your article! You're almost a bigger shill for Switzerland than me 😃 I guess the only thing I would add is that there are many historical path dependencies between the points on your list. Eg in Geneva where I live there's the UN, commodity traders & mountains and in some convoluted ways they're all linked.
Agreed.
Fantastic! There is a massive difference between Switzerland and the Anglo Saxon system: in Switzerland there is system for power sharing. Elections are not about win or lose, but about your weight in a common government.
Switzerland is the most advanced form of “democracy beyond majoritarianism”
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zzr8Pgf7pMf6tTpbM/democracy-beyond-majoritarianism
Thanks for the link - this is excellent!
I also find your work quite interesting; as you know, forecasting is for me a critical element for a better governance.
Some of my ideas on governance began when I worked for the BIS in Basel, and saw the Swiss system personally: it was one of my most important formative experiences.
All my non technical work is in my EA forum Account, so you can have a look in the post titles and read if the theme looks interesting. Kind regards, Arturo.
I do not buy the Thiel technomonarchy at all, and I think the US could learn a lot from our sister republic, but there is one key difference: cultural homogeneity. I have a vague belief that it's extremely difficult to become a Swiss citizen, and as a result there is a rather long, continuous understanding of what it means to be Swiss though it evolves over time and creates its own factions. By contrast, the US is defined by heterogeneous culture, without many shared norms, especially post-1970s. The polarization is downstream of those trends, though the system exacerbates it and rewards ambitious politicians and polemicists for exploiting it. In so many ways, the US system is defined as building a system that can end zero-sum, blood-and-soil politics while still having a baseline identity of being an America with an overarching system that can accept multiple cultures.
It's arduous to become Swiss - you're definitely right on that. However, we're more a "national of will" than some Japanese type of cultural homogeneity. Something like 25% of residents are non-Swiss and something like 50% is either non-Swiss or has a recent migratory background and there is quite the cultural difference between language regions. So, we don't have federalism for completely different reasons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6stigraben However, fully agree that the Swiss model wouldn't fit America 1:1.
Wonderful piece here from Kevin. So good, in fact, that I need to read it again.
I don’t think there is any doubt that the American FPTP system is enabling/creating a highly polarized environment that leads…well…not to a place that we want to go.
I have long held that direct democracy is still workable, though I prefer using sortition: https://www.lianeon.org/p/imagining-our-martian-government
I do have a question though. How exactly does the Swiss system work? I understand there are still parties and proportional representation, but there is also direct democracy. Which decisions are “directly” decided, and which are decided by elected representatives?
Thanks! So, the default for drafting legislation is a regular parliament. However, there is a popular vote if a) there is a constitutional change or b) the parliament accepts a law again which some group collects enough signatures form the population to hold a popular referendum on. On top of that the population can initiate novel legislation, if c) someone collects enough signatures within a specific time frame. (though something like 80-90% of popular initiatives are rejected by popular vote).
Thank you for explaining. I am going to have to read up more on this. Look at those super low levels of public debt!