If you ask a Swiss person who their president is, they likely won’t be able to tell you. And it’s not because they are politically apathetic or uninformed. In Switzerland, citizens don’t vote for their president.
Introducing Switzerland’s peculiar brand of direct democracy. In this small alpine country, citizens elect a new Parliament every four years, and the Parliament chooses a group of seven councilors from different parties. They are the head of state. The presidency (a mostly symbolic role) rotates among the members every year. But the keystone of Swiss democracy is the regular use of referendums, in which citizens vote on everything from their town’s new sports center to the country’s immigration policy.
It’s a pretty empowering idea because, as Michael Bechtel, professor of political science at the University of St. Gallen, explains, in a direct democracy there is “a stronger incentive for political elites to take into account citizen preferences when making choices.” It might sound like a panacea for Occupy Wall Street types, but this is actually a complex system with both advantages and disadvantages.