Who is the President of the Swiss Confederation? It is a question almost no one can answer.
I have put it to many politically engaged people in Sweden. Hardly anyone knows. This year his name is Guy Parmelin, but next year it will be someone else. And there is a natural explanation: in Switzerland, no one governs alone.
The president is chosen from among the seven members of the government for one year at a time, with no possibility of extension. The role is mainly ceremonial. The president chairs the government’s meetings – and that is about it.
Yet Switzerland hosts some of the world’s most important international meetings and negotiations. No Swiss politician blocks the view. Perhaps that is exactly why they can be the hosts.
This text is about the problem with strong leaders. My thesis is simple: people get in the way of issues.
Not all democracy is representative
Many people believe that democracy means electing someone to decide for us for four years. Representative democracy is widespread, but it is only one form of democracy – not democracy itself. Switzerland shows that it can be done differently.
In several cantons, the people have made decisions directly since the 14th century. At the national level, mandatory referendums on constitutional amendments were introduced in 1848. From 1874, citizens could demand a referendum on any new law by collecting 50,000 signatures, and from 1891 they could put forward their own proposals through popular initiatives. Today, the Swiss vote on issues on average four times a year.
The four largest parties have governed together for decades, regardless of election results. When the president has to defend a compromise on closer ties with the EU, he does so even though his own party opposes it. The issue is at the centre, not the person.
And it works. Switzerland has no natural resources to speak of and a mountainous, costly terrain – yet it is among the best-managed economies in the world. The major banks grew up in the same era as direct democracy. Basler Bankverein was founded in 1854, Bank in Winterthur in 1862, and UBS was formed in 1912. This does not prove that direct democracy created the country’s prosperity. But it shows that direct democracy does not stand in its way – on the contrary, it seems to have served even the banks well.
Strong leaders make for dangerous games
Leader-centred democracies are culturally related to dictatorships. It can feel safe to rally behind a strong leader. But that patriarchal culture is closely tied to militarisation.
Research points the same way. States where power is concentrated in one person more often end up in conflict with others and take greater risks. A leader whose authority rests on strength cannot back down without losing face. The result is a primitive game of chicken that, at worst, turns fatal.
Leader-centredness also has a hidden cost: people stop speaking up. They hold back bad news, and the leader makes decisions on distorted information. Researchers call this the dictator’s dilemma – but the same mechanism exists in democracies and in ordinary workplaces.
Kennedy and the crises
John F. Kennedy learned this the hard way. Before the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, there was an assumed consensus. No one objected, even though several had doubts. Afterwards, Kennedy rebuilt the way he made decisions: he invited critics, split the group into smaller teams and had his brother play devil’s advocate. Eighteen months later came the Cuban Missile Crisis. The same people – but a different process.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the world was a hair’s breadth from all-out nuclear war. What saved us was not strength, but the fact that Kennedy listened to his group of dissenting advisers and secretly negotiated a compromise. On a Soviet submarine, the officer Vasili Arkhipov refused to launch a nuclear torpedo. It was deliberation and personal doubt that saved the world – not decisiveness.
The alpha male is a myth
The concept of the “alpha” came from studies of wolves in captivity. The researcher who popularised it has since retracted it himself: a wild wolf pack is a family, not a hierarchy.
Among gorillas, the strongest usually rules. But strength and wisdom do not always go hand in hand. Among chimpanzees, the leader is rarely the strongest, but rather the one best at building alliances and keeping the peace. Bonobos have a completely different culture, where females form coalitions and conflicts are resolved socially and pragmatically.
So how we organise ourselves is not genetically determined. Organisation is a matter of culture – and culture is something we can choose.
A culture of dominance also rewards the wrong qualities: self-confidence instead of competence. Studies show that people who are sure they are good leaders are often worse leaders than those who doubt themselves. Those who doubt, listen. Those who feel born to lead easily get lost in a society where no one knows everything.
No one knows everything
Humans have built society through specialisation. Different people are good at different things. Over time, complexity has grown so great that no one can be an expert in everything – not even the wisest leader.
Climate, healthcare, education, the economy, artificial intelligence: each field demands its own knowledge. When a single person or a small party is expected to have all the answers, decisions get worse. The consequence is inescapable: we must distribute influence more widely.
History’s next step
Hegel argued that history moves dialectically: every order gives birth to its opposite, and something new grows out of the tension. Ironically, he himself saw the Prussian monarchy as the high point of history. (Even philosophers fall for strong leaders.)
Today we know that democracy replaced royal absolutism. But leader-centredness has crept back into democracy. Kings became party leaders and presidents, and election campaigns are about faces instead of issues.
The next step is for leaders to make room – for what? It is time for democracy to return. Leaders can only be replaced by all of us. Until now, that was practically impossible; millions of people do not fit in a town square. Thanks to digital technology, it is no longer impossible.
My proposal, then, is to move modern democracy from the physical square into an app. Not an algorithm that decides for us, but a tool where we ourselves can propose, discuss and decide on issues – one at a time. That is the idea behind Peer Democracy.
The next time someone asks who is in charge, I hope the answer is as hard as the question about the Swiss president. Not because no one decides, but because everyone does.