@dot_Sp0T kinda, after I pay for internet and write answer to similar question worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/60125/… . senpai noticed your interest, but question and explanation rather big/long, so prior the discussion have to be a base established
No bother; I really prefer our Swiss system I guess; instead of one person at the top there's 7 persons that reside over a department each and have to take decisions as a group
@bilbo_pingouin nah, there's a Bundesratspräsident that changes each year - the function is represential as well as the person who leads discussions; but nothing more
It is. But I like the fact that the head of state, the person who represents you in front of other countries' head of state, in international conferences, and so on, is decided directly by the people.
Now in France, the government comes from the parliament. So if both the president and the government come from the same side (as it is right now), the president gets a lot of influence. If they come from opposite side, the president usually restict himself to some negociation with the government, international affairs and state representation (last time was 1997-2002 with J. Chirac as president)
So on the Swiss government: There's a two chamber parliament - one chamber is the Nationalrat with 200 seats distributed in proportion to the inhabitants of the different Kantone (e.g. 1 seat for a small Kanton such as the Appenzell but 35 seats for Zurich), the other chamber is the Ständerat which consists of 2 seats for each Kanton (making 46 seats); Then there's the Bundesrat which consists of 7 seats residing over 7 different Departements (EDA, EDI, EJDP, VBS, EFD, WBF, UVEK)
Now the task of these organs is to propose new laws and implement accepted laws/changes - the people of Switzerland vote for these new laws and changes basically one every quarter. E.g. at the 27th of this month we vote about the Nuclear Power Phase-Out of Switzerland
I know that it's complicated to make a perfect system, because, you can see that, for example, the representation of each individual in the Ständerat is much higher in Appenzell than in Zurich. And are there exactly 35 more population in Zurich than in Appenzell? If there isn't, you also create an imbalance here.
@bilbo_pingouin the representation of the individual is pretty much the same for each Kanton in the Nationalrat; but then again - the Nationalrat doesn't represent the individual per se.. the individual represents itself; the Nationalrat/Ständerat is more of a group of elected individuals that, besides their normal jobs, spend a lot of time each year discussing on how to implement the changes decided upon by the people
It's probably a weird concept to wrap your head around
E.g. I've now got the documents on the nuclear-power vote in front of me. There's a little booklet explaining the position of the original group proposing the law, there's some statements from the Bundesrat, and there's a list of proposed articles of the law, as well as proposed amendments
Now if this initiative (proposal) gets accepted by the peoples votes, the Nationalrat/Ständerat will have to work on implementing this initiative and integrating it into our current set of laws so it doesn't clash with other laws or severely cripple Switzerland for some reason
@dot_Sp0T Nope. If, say (inventing number, I'm too lazy to look it up), Appenzell, has 10,000 people and Zurich, 700,000, you have $2\times 10^{-4}$ representant per people in Appenzell and less than $3\times10^{-6}$ in Zurich.
Well apparently I can neither create a blank bookmark nor modify an existing bookmark in any way here in Microsoft Edge.. sooo I can't currently use it because I am in no mood to reevaluate new browsers :(
The Ständerat does not represent the people but the political/governmental instance that is the kanton
and then again, none of both is as represential as what we know from the US or probably France
France is doing the best for president, for me, as everyone count exactly the same way regardless of where you live (or anything else, for that matter)
but then for the parliament, it falls down to the same issues: the country is split into small division, and an election take place in each of those. Each local winner will get to parliament.
Which lead to an imbalance between the heavily populated area, and deserted area, and is also biased against minority parties, which might get no representation and yet collect more than 10% of the total vote
normally we have in most "Western" countries, what we call a representative democracy. Not everyone can go to the parliament all the time. And not every decision can be done using referendii (I mean in Swiss you use that tool very often, and that's good, but not all the time because that would be impractical).
So you vote for someone, and give them the right to decide for you on a number of subjects/topics.
that's what we call representation.
Of course, it's an election, so you might be represented by someone other people voted for and you not, but majority rules.
That elected person has to represent your meaning or your best interest in a certain office. That can be a city, that can be a canton, that can be a parliament, or that can be in bilateral or other international discussion.
I don't know of any democracy who does not work with that principle.
Naturally there will be representation, but there's different forms - E.g. there's the forms where people vote for representatives once in awhile and that's it. No influence anymore, whatsoever
And there's the Swiss way which I was elaborating on, where the same thing happens; but the eventual final decision on anything is still done by the people by voting on these decisions
and as this is a democracy, there naturally is the downside of minorities having to fight harder than majorities
@dot_Sp0T still not all decisions as far as I know. I know you vote more regularly on a variety of subjects. Which is good. But you don't get a say in each and every law, do you?
I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think there are many laws that are voted in the Parliament in Swiss as well, but a law can be challenged by one of the political party and presented to a global votation. Similarly, people not elected can initiate a votation by themselves (provided they get enough support for it).
Basically there's many ways for laws getting passed; but they still have to be made public and there's always enough time to create a referendum by collecting 50'000 signatures
If I wanted to create a proposal for a law saying that every cow in Switzerland had to be painted pink, I would've to collect 100'000 signatures. After that it has to be looked at by the parliament and has to be brought up to the people's vote if there's no fundamental flaw in it
@bilbo_pingouin but 50'000 signatures from a set of 8'000'000 people is nothing
it's not even 1 percent
So yes and no; while big changes/proposals have to be brought up for public vote in any ways, there's also smaller changes that can be passed if no one notices - due to the party system as we have it though there's always enough attention it seems
Yeah, here the parliament membership is what we call an Amt (probably translate to office?); you don't get paid by the country to do it, but most parlamentarians have some backing from their parties - so it's private funds
So to come back to the original point, so you need a representation. And how is that representation organised is complex and varies from country to country.
You want to make sure that the diversity of the country is well represented, so you need people from the various places. You want it to be fair, so each parliament member represents the same number of voters.
Those are rules that you should have for a parliament
And that is very hard to get.
If you fail in one or another, you get parts of your country not represented, or you get demographic imbalance in representation, which can lead to a majority given to a person/party with less total vote.
Like apparently the recent US election. Clinton received more votes, but Trump won more (larger) states.
But there's another big issue in countries like the US or France or Germany, etc... The country is defined by a common ethnicity and or language - which actually promotes having minorities
But in general, the German way is not too bad. They split the parliament in two. One side, for region representants, and one side for a proportional vote. So they essentially take the two extreme and combine them, hoping to get both benefits. But then it's complex to understand...
It's a complicated subject, in my understanding there's no real way to structure a government so it can incorporate whatever minority there is, because minorities are a symptom of a system too generalized already :/
Folks, there's a dedicated election chatroom, if you want to discuss the thing. It's probably best to keep election chatter out of your site's main chatroom so that folks who don't want to have to deal with the election don't have to.
@ArtOfCode that is a good point, but nevermind that point there usually isn't anyone talking about anything on here but the people that are currently discussing; so yeah :/
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