Citizens or Politicians: Who is Better at Deliberation and Does it Matter? A Qualitative Assessment of Speeches at the Landsgemeinde in Glarus

The Landsgemeinde of Glarus, an open-air assembly with binding decision-making power in one of Switzerland's cantons, is commonly praised to be the prototype of democratic self-government. However, critics contend that the Landsgemeinde is simply a different playground for the same (elite) actors that are, in one way or another, already otherwise involved in representative democratic institutions. We take these criticisms head on and investigate whether and to what extent the deliberative capacities of ordinary citizens can compete with the ones of local and cantonal representatives. Furthermore, we examine whether citizens’ inputs contributed to enhance argumentative diversity and to what extent they have influenced the output of the Landsgemeinde debates against motions tabled by the cantonal parliament. To answer these questions, we make use of an original database containing the totality of 471 speeches held by citizens and politicians at the Landsgemeinde of Glarus between 2000 and 2013.