Disillusioned Democrats and Overwhelmed Democrats: Comparing Citizens’ Discourses about Politics in a Pure Representative and a Semi-Direct Democracy

Switzerland and the U.K. are both representative democracies experiencing a right-wing surge in politics with a strong emphasis on restricting immigration, cutting back on public services, and preserving national sovereignty. However, Switzerland is also a semi-direct democracy where citizens can decide on a range of national and local issues by starting initiatives and voting in referendums. Drawing from 18 focus group discussions, conducted in London and Zurich during October-November 2015, we compare citizens discourses about politics in the U.K. and Switzerland, arguing that the context of direct democracy provides for very different evaluations of government and the role of citizens in government. The focus groups enable us to move beyond the aggregation of individual attitudes and consider the shared values and norms of a given population. Swiss participants described their political system as a ‘luxury’, claiming that in Switzerland ‘the people are in charge’ and ‘there are many opportunities to change things’. However, three main concerns emerged: citizens are ‘overwhelmed’ by direct democracy, political processes take too long, and popular decisions are sometimes ignored or challenged by counter-initiatives. The British focus group discussions were characterised by strong elements of dissatisfaction: ‘voting is pointless’, ‘smaller parties don’t stand a chance’, ‘political parties break promises’, ‘politicians don’t know how the average person lives’, and ‘citizens are not informed about what goes on’. Despite their many criticisms, British participants were quite reluctant about the idea of giving citizens more control over political decisions. Whereas in Switzerland references to specific politicians were strikingly scarce, in the U.K. politics was discussed largely in terms of the qualities of political candidates and political participation was understood primarily as voting in elections.