Speaker Gabriel Barta
Many people know about Switzerland's frequent use of the instruments of direct democracy, initiatives and referenda. Even more interesting, however, is a rarely mentioned but fundamental characteristic of the political system: concordance. In a sense you could say that in Switzerland there is no political opposition, but in fact (to no-one's surprise) exactly the same diametrically opposed political tendencies are always fighting it out as in the other democratic countries. The difference is that the final decisions reached are largely independent of the weight of the parties in parliament. Sounds undemocratic, doesn’t it ? We’ll describe the system briefly and show that the institutions are indeed democratic, even if they function in a very different way from those in most countries. One of the unfavourable side-effects of the system is that everything takes longer, but we will try to show that this inertia also has advantages. In the end, and we will give a few examples, you have to judge by results.
This talk will be held on the first floor of the Centre for Student Life, Room 1.26 / 1.27