You’re arguing for massive changes to a very unique country with the oldest democracy in Europe. Unless you’re Swiss, or have credentials related to Swiss law, I don’t think you’re arguing anything realistic.
Countries can be as unique as they want to be, but they still need a system for preventing authoritarianism. The existing system is fine if it's effective and not fine if it isn't.
Switzerland has been preventing authoritarianism since before it was cool. Like, for 700 years. (With a brief interruption when they were invaded and overthrown by Napoleon.) So their system for the first 600 of those 700 years was the best system for preventing authoritarianism; a lot of it survives today.
This would be a wrong argument even if your premise about Switzetland was factually true (it's not).
It's like praising Danish architecture for its earthquake-resistance since no Danish building ever collapsed in an earthquake. It fails to account for the fact that Denmark never gets any significant earthquakes.
You can't tell how good a system is at resisting descent into authoritarian rule unless wannabe-autocrats have tried several times, amassed some support to achieve their goals, and the democratic institutions held against them. This never happened in Switzerland, not even in the 1930s: the ability of the Swiss constitution to precent authoritarian backsliding is untested.
(But as a side note, what you're saying is not factually correct. The Swiss constitution is from 1848, and before Napoleon only Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden would be considered nonauthorian. Many cantons, like Bern, were ruled by birthright autocratic families, and had no popular vote whatsoever.)
I'm sorry I haven't answered your comment so far, because, even though it is mistaken in many ways, it seems to be in good faith, and I think it deserves an answer.
Switzerland also has amassed hundreds of constitutional amendments over that time. So perhaps the ability to frequently pass amendments has been instrumental to their success, and they should be on the lookout for new opportunities to bolster their democracy, such as constitutional safeguards against certain forms of state surveillance.
Requiring 50% in a referendum is different from and safer than requiring 50% in a parliament vote. A parliament can go against the people that elected them.
Countries that don't regularly have popular votes face the challenge that any vote is considered as a vote of confidence in their current government. It basically only reflects the popularity of the government and people do not evaluate the face value, the core of the issue. Having a real democracy takes a lot of training and effort.
Exactly this. In Switzerland, you generally have 3-4 vote periods per year with 0-8 different subjects). This is needed to make sure that people vote on the subject.
Brexit was 52% of voters voting to leave, but that was only 37% of the electorate. [1] It wasn't >50% of the electorate, let alone >50% of the population.
...I'll argue that those that didn't participate in that vote elected to opt out. I.e. Don't cry if you didn't care to participate and then don't get what you wanted.
This is a referendum that changes the fundamental rules of the game, not a pizza order. The onus isn't on the population to waste their time vetoing your bad or mediocre ideas, it's on you to come up with good ideas. And disgusting your constituents enough that they abstain entirely should very much not be a viable strategy. If you want to change the constitution, you gotta convince people that you're doing something good, including those who are hard to convince. That's literally the entire point. If you're not managing that, clearly your change isn't good enough to make.
Anyway, I wasn't even trying to argue in favor of this position, or against it. I was merely replying to the parent comment that Brexit did not meet the threshold that their parent comment had suggested.
People got lazy lately after a long peace time. Saying “it can’t get worse than that” with 5-10% unemployment. Yes this is not good, but it can get way worse than that. Also “my vote doesn’t count, and everyone is bad”. Enemies of democracy have pushed this a lot lately, internet make it trivially cheap and easy to spread. Nations like UK are in the find out phase.
