This is a short post.
Politicians in representative democracies like the US, Canada, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, Japan, etc., will never want to change the system because the system is good to them. How can it not be if they have all the power to pass laws, raise or lower taxes, set up their own salaries and pensions, sign treaties, declare war, etc.?
Such power also atracts wealthy lobbies who, in many ways, are good to politicians; they make big nonations to their campaigns, “deliver” votes, offer then comfortable well-paying jobs once they leave politics, their high level of power also gives politicians the presence in the minds of the public to write books that make them millionaires, etc.
No matter that most Americans, British, French and others, are not satisfied with their democracy, and their politicians, the politicians will not change the system in any meaninful way. At most they will go for proportional representation, that gives smaller voter groups more voice, but still zero power. They will get the same zero power the majority has, even those who voted for a majority government.
The fact of the matter is that to fix representative democracy we have to bring direct democracy. But the politicians will never bring it, unless the people, ordinary citizens, push them until they have no choice.
Let us stop fooling ourselves with programs to “empower women” and other such initiatives. The programs to “empower women” are designed to give them as much power as men, which in representative democracies is close to zero. Sure, there are more men in government and in board rooms, that is good for the women that get there, but most women will continue, like most men, with next to zero power to decide issues; all they can do is vote and hope for the best, often the worse arrives instead.
It is the politicians who decide everything in representative democracies. The voters have freedom and vote decide who governs, but beyond that they decide nothing; it is the politicians who decide what laws to pass, how to apply them, what treaties to sign, what will the level of taxation be, what educational system we will have, when to go to war, and on and on. All voters can do between election is complain, they do not have the power, they have no formal procedures to stop anything the politicians do, or force them to do anythings.
But there is a way, it is called direct democracy. Until 1867 the Swiss had represemntative democracy, similar to what the US and the rest have now. But in 1867, the people of Zurich decided they had enough. Another pandemic was the trigger. The people decided that from then on they would have the power to stop laws and decisions by politiccians, that they would tell the politicians they had to pass a law on this or that issue.They also decided that it would be the people who would change the constitution, and that the supreme court would not have the power to declare any popular referendum “contrary to the constitution”. They also decided that the people would have the power to call referendums, not the executive, not the legislative.
From Zurich direct democracy quickly spread to the rest of Switzerland. The Swiss have developed a direct democracy that is light-years ahead of California’s direct democracy, and of other states in the US; I have no space here to go into that. California’s direct democracy does not work very well because it is not a real direct democracy.
The Swiss have not looked back sin ce 1867; why would they if they have the most politically and economically stable, most prosperous, most democratic country in the whole World?
By the way, ignore the flawed rankings of The Economist about “quality of democracy”. Why flawed? because The Economist places Switzerland behind 11 representative democracies. It is absurd that the country that comes closest to “government by the people”, which is what democracy is, will not be ranked number one, or even in special category far above the rest.
Real empowerment of ordinary women is not about how many of them are in parliament or in boardrooms. That is empowerment for the women who get there, but it is foolish of other women to feel empowered because some women are in government. Just as it is foolish for ordinary men fo feel they are empowered because most politiciaans are men. Real empowerment of ordinary men and women happens whan ordinary men and women are the final decision-makers on any issue the decide that they must decide.
That is what they have in Switzerland; Swiss men and women are more empowered than the men and women of any other country. Real empowerment happens when ordinary citizens decide their destiny.
To bring direct democracy to youir country, men and women have to forget tha fake division and join forces to force politicians to accept direct democracy, just like the Swiss did. Sure, Swiss women earned the right to vote later than many other women in the West, but today are ahead of all of them, no other women in the World come even close to the decision-making power Swiss women, and men have on the important issues for the nation.
Victor Lopez
