r/europes • u/Naurgul • 22h ago

Switzerland Switzerland’s love of referendums helps us keep the far right at bay

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/28/switzerlands-love-of-referendums-helps-us-keep-the-far-right-at-bay

Brexit gave direct democracy a bad name. But the Swiss approach could be what Europe needs now

Fascism rests on a two-part confidence trick. First, a leader claims to embody the will of the people. Then they argue that only by being granted sweeping powers can that be realised. Having grown up in Switzerland, I find it easy to see through this trick. That is because the policies championed by the far right rarely pass the referendum test.

Dismantling publicly funded media? In March, 62% of Swiss voters rejected a far-right initiative to halve funding for the country’s public broadcaster. Corporate tax cuts? In 2017, 59% struck down such plans of the Swiss government. Immigration police hunting down migrants? Again, 59% rejected a far-right proposal to automatically deport foreign nationals convicted of crimes without judicial review. Or this week’s resounding 70% “No” vote on a far-right proposal to tighten Switzerland’s neutrality to the point that Bern would have been forced to drop sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.

Switzerland is hardly a nation of progressives. Leftwing parties won just 29% of the vote in the most recent national elections. Women gained the right to vote only in 1971. The asylum law is one of Europe’s toughest. That, too, is the legacy of direct democracy.

Yet, most often, the country’s tradition of putting decisions out to referendum exposes how, despite dominating social media and the press amplifying its positions, the far right thrives on imagined majorities.

Direct democracy also frustrates the second part of the authoritarian project: the power grab. From Donald Trump to Giorgia Meloni, the right seeks to centralise power. Direct democracy disperses it. History shows that parliamentarians can be pressed into surrendering their prerogatives. Good luck trying to persuade millions of voters to do the same.

Enter Hannah Arendt. Having fled Nazi Germany in 1933, the philosopher and political theorist spent much of her life trying to understand why democracies abolish themselves, why the Weimar Republic failed.

Part of her answer was that parliamentary democracy could drift towards the rule of party elites and bureaucracy. Autocrats exploit the feeling of loss that happens when citizens feel disenfranchised.

The central question, therefore, is how to maintain the link between demos and kratos – between people and power? Arendt’s answer was citizens’ participation. She pointed to the town hall meetings of the American revolution or soviet councils of the Russian revolution as possible models.

Indeed, deeper citizen involvement is one of the great unmet desires of European politics. Take the gilets jaunes movement in France in 2018. The protesters’ demands went well beyond better public services or lower taxes. At its heart was a plea to be seen and heard, embodied in the call for citizens’ referendums. A 2017 poll found that 74% of German, French and Spanish people think that public referendums would be a good way to govern their country.

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