I think Switzerland might be a good model for a proto-panocracy. Do you / does anyone know who the President or prime minister of Switzerland? I don’t think they even have one, just a council of 7. And frequent referenda on anything a sufficient number of citizens want to change, either nationally or within cantons. It would be interesting to find out what effect new technology has had on generating interest and support for a particular referendum proposal. Do they have the equivalent of RFCs for example? Although I think generally referenda are only used for fairly straightforward binary issues such as should women be given the vote (1971). Actually not true - in the same year they had a referendum on the Federal budget
I've had a very brief look at Switzerland (https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/federal-council.html) and it seems they have a 'cabinet' of 7 people - a sort of cut down version of what we have in Britain. There's one who's elected President for a year ('first amongst equals'). Each of them is paid nearly £400k (though Swiss prices may well be higher than the UK).
It says that any Swiss voter can stand for election to the federal council. Who's on the council is determined by both chambers of their parliament - the Federal Assembly, which is in two parts one of 200 and one of 46 seats.
Wikipedia is surprisingly straightforward about the Swiss system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland) in talking about 'direct democracy' and ' the sovereign of Switzerland is actually its entire electorate'. Which sounds like something that's getting closer to the panocracy principles.
I'll need to study the Swiss model in more detail but, given the success of Switzerland as a nation, it seems like a brownie point for the concept of moving political power to the people. It is still a representational democracy with occasional referenda as opposed to a panocracy which would be entirely run by referendum.
I think Switzerland might be a good model for a proto-panocracy. Do you / does anyone know who the President or prime minister of Switzerland? I don’t think they even have one, just a council of 7. And frequent referenda on anything a sufficient number of citizens want to change, either nationally or within cantons. It would be interesting to find out what effect new technology has had on generating interest and support for a particular referendum proposal. Do they have the equivalent of RFCs for example? Although I think generally referenda are only used for fairly straightforward binary issues such as should women be given the vote (1971). Actually not true - in the same year they had a referendum on the Federal budget
Many thanks for the heads-up, David.
I've had a very brief look at Switzerland (https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/federal-council.html) and it seems they have a 'cabinet' of 7 people - a sort of cut down version of what we have in Britain. There's one who's elected President for a year ('first amongst equals'). Each of them is paid nearly £400k (though Swiss prices may well be higher than the UK).
It says that any Swiss voter can stand for election to the federal council. Who's on the council is determined by both chambers of their parliament - the Federal Assembly, which is in two parts one of 200 and one of 46 seats.
Wikipedia is surprisingly straightforward about the Swiss system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland) in talking about 'direct democracy' and ' the sovereign of Switzerland is actually its entire electorate'. Which sounds like something that's getting closer to the panocracy principles.
I'll need to study the Swiss model in more detail but, given the success of Switzerland as a nation, it seems like a brownie point for the concept of moving political power to the people. It is still a representational democracy with occasional referenda as opposed to a panocracy which would be entirely run by referendum.