“Flood” of people’s initiatives poses no threat

Critics warn that a reported huge increase in the number of people’s initiatives is clogging Switzerland’s political system. Scientific evidence shows that in reality the situation is more complex. Calls for a reform of the system of direct democracy are a recurrent topic in Swiss politics. Over the past few months, several politicians and experts have suggested setting a higher threshold for the minimum number of signatures for initiatives and referendums. A small centre-right political party wants to link the number of signatures to the actual number of citizens. It currently takes at least 100,000 citizens signatures for an initiative to be put to a nationwide vote. The figure has been unchanged since 1977 and represents about 2% of the electorate. This compares with 8% when the right was first introduced in 1891. But two studies found no obvious correlation between the size of populations in different cantons and the number of initiatives that made it to the ...