Direct democracy – a “co-creation” analysis I.

I analyzed Swiss direct democracy from 3 aspects. The first one was a co-creation analysis. Here I looked at how the system aligns with my findings from co-creation literature. I summarized the findings of my co-creation literature review in an earlier post.

Overall, the Swiss direct democracy system has some overlaps with co-creation literature’s findings, but also some mismatches. And most importantly, it nicely complements co-creation literature’s gaps in the specific area o processes. Here’s a summary view – light grey items are mismatches, normal items are matches, bold items are strong matches, green is a new addition, and red are remaining unaddressed areas:

Drivers. None of the strongest ‘Drivers’ match, as Swiss institutions were not called into life by technology, nor was government in need of new strategies. However, empowered and critical citizens and social awareness are strong matches, as the main goal of SDD is to give voice to people, and to minorities not represented in parliament. When SDD was established in the 19^th century, giving voice to people and regions was a necessity, as these historically enjoyed high levels of independence.

Mindset. Involvement of leadership (i.e. state) is a strong match, and so is the existence of a mission: ‘democracy by the people’. Redistribution of power is a strong match, though it was not so much a re-distribution, but rather maintaining traditional ways of close citizen involvement. But there was no new type of customer (i.e. citizen), nor was a competitive advantage sought. Worth noting is that culture change was not needed to establish SDD, but the state itself was forced to change (see in a later post). Staff involvement and the three layers of depth (passive, reactive, integrated) are palpable in the ‘militia’ parliament, and close relationship between citizen and the state (see in a later post).

To keep this post short, I will detail Frameworks, Processes, customers, Tools and Measurement in the next post.