A few tidbits:
Coincidentelly, today I stumbled across the website of Mehr Demokratie e.V. which is pushing for elements of direct democracy in our constitution.
All parties -- except the ever-conservative CDU/CSU -- call for elements of direct democracy in their election manifesto. In fact, just month before the election in 2002 the Red-Green coalition put a law before the Bundestag to introduce direct democracy. SPD, Greens, PDS and parts of the FDP voted for it, but it failed to reach the required 2/3 majority. Roland Claus of the PDS then argued that the whole debate was just election politics and that the SPD only put forth the law when it was sure that the CDU would vote against it, thus ensuring its failure. Judging from the non-showing of the SPD elite I tend to agree with his assessment. You can watch the debates online if you like (1. Lesung, 2. und 3. Lesung), there are some great statements by the PDS and Gerald Häfner (Greens) who is a strong proponent of direct democracy.
Of course, I should not forget that the PDS had already put forth a similar law in 1993 and, unfortunately, was ridiculed for it.
So, let's hope that in the next legislative period we can finally achieve this and maybe revitalize the voting public. Merkel is against it, but a poll in 2000 showed that 68% of the CDU favor direct democracy.
We only have this on the state level in various degrees. Bavaria has the most experience with easy DD in Germany, and has had good results.
California's direct democracy form (albeit at the state level also) called the initiative system, sounds like it shares some of the conduits of the Swiss system. If you gather enough signatures, you can get a special election, or an initiative on the ballot, or even a "recall" election. (This last one is the way Governor Schwarzenegger was elected, via a mid-term recall of Governor Davis, who was not so corrupt as to be indictable, but was not well-liked, especially by the conservative Republican faction in the State.)
Other states have this process, too, but the result is sometimes very messy -- initiatives are usually poorly or loosely written, and money drives the signature gathering and initiative agenda focus 100%. It's a sharp stick in the hand of the most wealthy individuals and special interest groups. If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space. -Carl Sagan, Contact
Anyway, the proposal by Mehr Demokratie is specifically designed for Germany's political system and includes certain safeguards:
jandsm: Politically, they have been so successful, they actually are no longer politically necessary
I disagree. With Clement pushing the line of the coal lobby, and the whole of the CDU, CSU and FDP pushing the line of the nuclear lobby against alternative energies, their stance on energy still needs them for pushing - if left to the other parties, the same thing will happen as in Denmark (where Rasmussen's neoliberal dogmatism brought private wind power installations almost to a standstill). Organic farming also needs them against the CDU/CSU-aligned Sonnleitners and the coming Big Agrobusiness - also in the field of genetically modified crops (my main problem with those aren't health and pollution fears, but their enabling of the rise of giant agricultural corporations). And, RE immigrants, their push for a change in citizenship law from ethnic-based to residence- and culture-based (which, BTW, Lafontaine agreed with passionately - do some recent comments indicate he doesn't anymore?), the most other parties are so much against that the Bundesrat stopped the proposed law.
Last but not least, public transport would need someone to push it against highways and cheap airlines. On the other hand, the German Greens didn't achieve much on this front. Now okay, decisions were in the hands of SPD ministers, but they didn't talk much about the issue, and when they did, I disagreed with proposed solutions (they agree with railway privatisation, in my opinion one of the big silly ideas in Europe today that are pushed though dogmatically everywhere, even disregarding or misreading negative experience elsewhere). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
