Direct Democracy is primarily about sovereignty- Sovereignty for the people to decide and sovereignty for the nation to decide together, as the sum of all it’s residents.
It’s a big change from where we are at right now. Right now, ordinary residents have no legal position to be directly influencing any public decisions. Even in binding referendums, of which New Zealand has only ever had a handful in its entire history and some of those were overturned, the public has absolutely no legal say in anything. It’s all decided by a handful of people who can and literally do whatever they like.
It’s also a big change for the country. On big decisions, the country would decide things together, not politicians. Everything would be a binding referendum including our position as a country. Not only does this restore sovereignty to the nation, it’s a decision that New Zealand together truly made.
So what would be the impact of real democracy on the nation.
There’s two keys ways we need to approach this, one is by using research and existing case studies and two is by looking at our existing situation and trying to predict what would happen if the people decided things and under what conditions.
Using existing research models means we turn to other other nations who already use democracy and see what the impact has been for them. Looking at our existing situation requires extensive modelling and expertise to make predictions.
SWITZERLAND is the land people turn to most to understand Direct Democracy. They’ve been practicing various forms of it since the middle ages and even more so since World War II. Per capita, Switzerland have one of the highest happiness and income levels, trust and stability. Switzerland is now a well oiled machine for direct democracy and over the decades and beyond, empowering the people of Switzerland has not caused the nation any significant drawbacks and has helped advance it’s cause.
Switzerland is not unlike New Zealand in many ways. Switzerland is a mountainous small country much many different cultures, speaking different languages. It has a small population only about double New Zealand’s. It’s generally a politically neutral nation, which New Zealand has also been internationally for most of its political life.
There’s much to gain from having a closer democratic relationship with Switzerland so we can can understand more deeply Democracy’s drivers in their economy and society. Although there’s much to learn, the top level indicators would suggest it could very well be in our interests to head more in this direction.
