The bilingual event was introduced by Marceau Schroeter, on behalf of the organizing Swiss Democracy Foundation. The author of “Swiss Made Democracy” highlighted the symbolic importance of the event being held at Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s birth home, currently a literature museum and a pilgrimage destination for anyone interested in modern democratic theory. He highlighted the particularly timely character of the event happening on the International Day of Democracy, allowing to exchange and bridge different democratic experiences in a context of rising threats to democracy all over the world.

Professor Raul Magni-Berton (Université Catholique de Lille, Belgium) then seized  the opportunity to present the most recent Global State of Direct Democracy report, published by Democracy International, co-authored by Asst. Prof. Clara Egger, also in attendance. This year’s report's main focus is on the importance of local democracy, in an international comparative setting. It posits that citizens' decisions cannot prevail at the national level if there is no direct democracy.

Clara Egger, assistant professor at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (The Netherlands) but also a candidate for the upcoming French presidential election as a member of the “Solution Démocratique” party, highlighted that her main campaign message is the introduction of direct democratic mechanisms into the French political system. On the topic of local democracy, she added that trust in elected officials is generally low and on a downhill slope, except for the local level. She concluded by saying that direct democratic institutions (in)directly create a climate of consensus democracy, which would make the initiative and referendum instruments compatible in the French context.

Raymond Loretan, president of the Diplomatic Club Geneva, argued that the Swiss model cannot be exported as such, emphasizing that context matters. He highlighted that Swiss political culture existed well before the likes of Rousseau and others elaborated the foundations of modern-day direct democratic theory. Bruno Kaufmann, co-president of the Swiss Democracy Foundation, but also affiliated to Democracy International, provided the necessary perspective of public preference: according to research by the World Values Survey, over 80% of the respondents worldwide preferred democracy over other forms of governance.

To close the event, Christine Lutringer, executive director at the Albert Hirschman Centre for Democracy, moderated the interactive discussion and Q&A, which was opened by Dr. Alexander Bastianen, scientific coordinator at the Albert Hirschman Centre and senior research fellow at the Swiss Graduate School for Public Administration (UNIL, Lausanne), including comments on the panelists main talking points, but also sharing insights on the links between decentralization, local autonomy and local democracy and how these pertain to the pillars of power sharing in Switzerland, which include direct democracy, consensus and federalism.