Disadvantages Of Direct Democracy

Contra arguments
Many scholars believe that direct democracy pave the way for citizens to give their opinion directly to formulate policy makings. Though it has a lot of advantages but many scholars outline the drawbacks of the direct democracy. Feld & Matsusaka (2000) found that cantons with mandatory referendums spend significantly less than other cantons based on panel data for all 26 cantons from 1980 to 1998. The estimate that the presence of a mandatory referendum with a spending threshold of 2.5 million Swiss francs (the sample median) is associated with 19% less expenditure per capita, holding constant other determinants of spending such as income. The magnitude of this effect is remarkably large, and suggests that the spending choices of Swiss legislators are far from the preferred policy of the median voter. They stated that this particular institution is more than a veil—government officials apparently find it too costly to routinely subdivide projects and evade referendums.
The number of bills voted on in parliament regularly increased, nearly doubling between the 1950s and the 1990s. Stability in the use of the referendum weapon is all the more puzzling as survey data clearly demonstrate that the Swiss federal system underwent a decline of confidence in government and parties, and the emergence of widespread feelings of political alienation. This loss of legitimacy is more severe in Switzerland than in other systems because popular support had dropped from very