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. Yet, whenever I argue for more direct democracy abroad, there is the same reaction: curiosity from ordinary people, eye-rolling from political and economic elites. But aren’t referendums a high-risk way of governing, they ask? Brexit, anyone?
There are risks. In June, Swiss voters narrowly rejected (55%) a far-right proposal to cap the population at 10 million and terminate EU-Swiss economic agreements. But unlike the Brexit referendum in the UK, a vote is never a final decision for the Swiss. Since 2000, the Swiss have voted on relations with Brussels more than a dozen times. Unlike politicians, the demos has little difficulty in admitting that yesterday’s answer may not be right for today.
But wouldn’t voters, if given the chance, blow a massive hole in the budget deficit? As every parent knows, responsibility breeds responsibility. Two-thirds of Swiss voters rejected a proposal to extend annual holidays by two weeks. A tragic case of excessive responsibility.
It seems that many in Europe have forgotten that we want to live in republics not only because they “deliver” in terms of rubbish collection or maximising individual freedom. Democracy’s most powerful idea is the promise of self-government: a political order that recognises we humans not merely as consumers or subjects of politics, but as the authors of our common future.
When that promise is broken, when people feel their votes have little impact and elites always get their way, the difference between democracy and authoritarianism begins to blur. It is then that things become truly dangerous.
To put a lock on the far right and breathe new life into that republican promise, we need a transfer of power from the nation state to its citizens. But here is the crux. If we really want to reestablish the primacy of democracy, the transfer of power to citizens needs to be accompanied by a transfer of power from the nation state to Europe.
Let’s not fool ourselves: today, nation states often cosplay sovereignty more than they exercise it. To claw back power from Silicon Valley, Washington and Beijing, we must organise as Europeans. And this is where another of direct democracy’s secret superpowers comes in.
In Switzerland, with its four linguistic communities, referendums are what create a joint public sphere and a sense of national community. In a multicultural country, being governed together is not enough. A shared identity is built above all through the experience of debating and governing together.
For Europe to become a real political community, it must find a way to both connect and empower its citizens. Direct democracy delivers on both. Giving up some national sovereignty in return for more individual power is an attractive offer. It could open a new chapter in the continent’s coming together, one capable of inspiring genuine excitement.
Imagine Europeans debating and voting together on such things as migration policy, the 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, or taxing the big digital corporations. Utopian? Perhaps. But every democratic advance once was.
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Joseph de Weck is an associate fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations and writes for Guardian Europe from Zürich and Paris
