Direct democracy – an organizational analysis I: Introduction

The goal of this organizational analysis was to identify how specific elments of Swiss Direct democracy align with the entire Swiss political decision-making ecosystem. I relied on the qualitative ‘Star Model’ tool of Jay Galbraith.

The halmark of good tools is that they are easy to understand, but difficult to master – the Star Model is one such tool. Read more about it here. On a very high level, the tool provides a holistic view of five key areas (strategy, structures, processes, people and rewards), and the strength of alignment between them.

The tool was originally created to analyze organization structures of companies, but has since been applied to the CIA, DARPA, and the Canadian military healthcare system. So using it to analyze direct democracy is not that far fetched,,,

I identified and analyzed each of the above 5 areas, as well as the strength of their alignment with each other. The below Figure shows a summary result of my analysis, highlighting that direct democracy is ***SPOILER ALERT*** a well-aligned system. The upcoming posts will go into more detail on each section and the alignments.