Imagine Not Knowing Who the President Is
I borrowed the article’s title from this 2018 article, that speaks in favour of Switzerland’s political model while contrasting it with the US model. In what follows I want to elaborate on its contents and bring it up to date with current events. I want to present to you a dictatorship-proof path for political regimes. One which makes the emergence of authoritarians and dictators very unlikely. This is the real danger in politics and, one could argue, the biggest danger for the well-being of humanity in general. I will also argue that most people are focusing on the wrong problem, left vs. right, which stops us from finding real long term solutions to conflicts and wars. It’s not the choice between the political left or the right that matters, but the choice between democracy and autocracy, and the concentration of power.
Donald Trump knows that. He has used non-stop bashing and criticism of the left to make people forget about the importance of democracy. Once everyone was focused on the wrong problem, he proceeded by initiating a literal power grab. We will get back to that.
I’m putting my faith into people, whole populations, and not small groups or individuals deciding for them. It’s too risky. People are too unpredictable, can deceive, and be evil. People can change very suddenly. We don’t want to believe it, but there is the potential to do atrocities in all of us. And so we need safeguards against individuals and small groups of individuals turning against the wants of the people they are supposed to represent and be accountable to.
I strongly disagree with people who put their hopes into strong leaders, even those who have values that I agree with, such as striving for peace. What I support instead are systems of government that serve the people part of that same system and at the same time protect them from any single group or individual who might want excessive power or control.
I know that living under an authoritarian regime doesn’t necessarily lead to a bad life, as my parents and grandparents have repeatedly told me, based on their own experience living in East Germany under an authoritarian socialist regime. They did have happy and fulfilled lives.
However, control and oppression aren’t natural and stable states for any system. Plus, we humans have free will, we are striving for freedom, and we will always pursue it. That’s why authoritarian regimes don’t stand the test of time and why as long as they exist conflict will always be present. People will fight for their freedoms.
In our current discussions around peace we are blaming warmongers and are desperately searching for peacemakers. Maybe that’s the best we can do in our current situation but to create lasting peace this can’t be the solution. The real solution is to design and evolve government systems to become “better”, meaning more democratic, and more “dictator proof”. This isn’t just my opinion, it has been shown that “democratic countries seem better governed than autocracies, seem to grow faster, and foster more peaceful conduct within and between them.”
There is a strong argument to be made that collaborative democracies (I will get to this one at the end of the article) are better than liberal democracies, that are better than electoral democracies, that are better than electoral autocracies, that are better than closed autocracies. We must focus on making government systems better.
The bad news is that today things aren’t getting better but worse. We are moving backwards. There are fewer democracies than a couple of years ago and democracies are becoming less democratic.
Countries that had made a significant step towards focusing on substance, meaning discussions about problems and solutions, have become sick and now show authoritarian symptoms: political discourse and opinions are about people and their intentions and actions. People know who their president is!
The media is full of Trump, Netanyahu, Macron, Scholz, Merz or Meloni. How come that single individuals are still so relevant in our decision making, in arguably democratic countries? We should be hearing and reading about the people of France or Germany and their opinions, arguments, decisions, and solutions, not their leaders. It’s a clear indication of weakness in our democratic models.
The most obvious example of how a democracy can become less democratic because of its lack of robustness is playing out right now in the US. Trump is trying to move the US from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy and in the worst case scenario into an electoral autocracy. Since getting into office, he has been focusing on gaining control of the most important levers of power in the American government, and that with skill. He has gained financial and informational power with DOGE. He is challenging the judiciary by prohibiting free speech on campuses and by attacking law firms who don’t align with him. He is using the military to threaten to invade his allies, Denmark and Canada. He chooses his own press. He is continuing to increase domestic surveillance. In brief, he attacks everyone and everything that doesn’t agree with him and grants favours to everyone who supports his own cause, power.
Trump has been elected to have executive power. Every other lever of power exists to keep him in check. If he and his government succeed in gaining control of some of them and then use them as they wish, there won’t be much difference between the American, the Russian, or the Chinese regime. We will see with time how resilient and safe the American democratic model really is.
The better outcome of this American tragedy is that Trump fails and that the US and other democracies refocus on the design of their democracies, led by specific goals and ideas, whose success is evaluated based on outcomes. And where power is delegated to those who align with the people as a whole. A system design able to adapt and be creative in case of failure or when being stuck, and where there is no way for anyone to have excessive power.
The best current example for that is Switzerland where not even its inhabitants care and often don’t even know who their president is. It’s a sign that the system works. Switzerland uses initiatives, referendums, yearly rotations of the president, delegation and decision making at different levels (country, cantons, communes and people), among other things, to make its democratic model work.
Switzerland isn’t perfect either and that’s what gets us to what I previously called collaborative democracies. Here Taiwan shows us the way. A liberal democracy could upgrade to a collaborative one if it integrated the right technology for constant feedback, transparency, systemic adaptability, and optimization, while obviously enhancing the existing valuable characteristics of lesser versions of democracy: privacy, freedom, distribution of power, equality, accountability, etc. A system of such nature would make manipulation and concentration of power a simple illusion.
To achieve such a feat we must implement “good” technology, that serves the system to become more democratic. For that we need system-scale technologies, and good personal use technologies. For a broader discussion and reliable recommendations about good technology, I would recommend this article or this article. This is very important. The wrong technology implemented by the wrong people, but even when implemented by good people, can lead to harmful outcomes and the worst possible outcomes. So don’t get tricked by those who advocate for the implementation of technology but not the right kind.
Let me finish with this. It’s a bad sign when the Financial Times is full of pictures of a president, like the Financial Times today, 26.03.2025. Instead, not knowing who the president is, is a good sign. If we refocus on making our democracies more collaborative, one of the best possible outcomes will be to not have a president at all, but a population being able to govern itself.