Table 5.3.

A system comparison between Great Britain and Switzerland

Great Britain: Representative, majoritarian democracy	Switzerland: Semi-direct, consensus democracy
Strong competition between parties Winner takes it all	Weak party competition Proportional representation
Salient elections lead to periodical alternation of power	Low salience of elections; power-sharing amongst political parties prevents alternation of power
Enactment of the political programme of the government, backed by a parliamentary single-party majority	Integration of cultural minorities and conflicting group interests; changing coalitions for different issues
Big innovation possible	Incremental innovation only
Political legitimacy through changes in power or re-election of a government satisfying voters’ expectations	Institutional legitimacy through different forms of participation: the most important decisions are taken by the people, important ones by parliament and the rest by the government
Underlying idea: politics for the people	Underlying idea: politics through the people
Participation as a form of general and programmatic influence: voters elect a government and its programme for the entire legislative period	Direct participation as ‘single-issue’ influence: people vote on specific questions. No strategic government policy, no influence of voters on a specific government programme