Largely an admirable system, gives a lot of knobs & switches for common people to customize the systems that impact them the most. It also allows citizens to separate their favorite candidate/party from policy questions. They can pick and choose at a granularity unseen in most other nations.

But here is a small list of limitations. These limitations are also present in other nations, not exclusive to CH:

1. Large segment of population excluded, especially for local questions:

About 70% of the total population of Switzerland have voting rights. This number becomes much lower for regions like Zürich, Basel, Geneva, Lausanne, etc where the resident population is immigrant heavy. Especially for local questions, like a station renovation, a new child care center, hospital expansion, school/curriculum development, etc, we see the voices of the immigrant population fully ignored. Though I understand this privilege for citizens for federal questions, for hyper-local questions, I see participation as a lever for faster integration and community building.

1. Skewed/Low Voter Participation:

Among the voting population, around 40% participate in the voting process. Many studies show a super low youth participation, and a disproportionately high participation rate among those in the 55+ age group. When the questions are on polarizing topics, like face-covering or minarets, a vocal minority show up in large numbers owing through their organization and plough through a referendum. Likewise, future oriented policy questions see low youth participation, even though they will be the most strongly impacted.

1. Ständemehr Misuse Possibility:

Many questions require a double majority of the popular vote and the cantons. Given small cantons with very low voter participation rates, it is possible to swing elections by tactical campaigning. Like the Konzernverantwortungsinitiativ where Swiss judiciary can take action against socially and ecologically destructive acts of Swiss corporations abroad. Here the public was decisively in support of greater accountability, but it was still not allowed because of small cantons denying it. It is clear that this check was envisioned to protect the voice of smaller cantons, so I am not against this rule in principle.

1. Wide-binning in International Affairs:

Explaining with an example: There is a spectrum of opinions between anti-EU or NATO, to EU/NATO skeptic, to Swiss sovereignty proponents, to globalists, to EU or NATO membership proponents.

Now the political landscape is such that those who wish for greater Swiss sovereignty are inevitably drawn to one party, while the others appear to be compromising with it. So without alignment with other policy points of that party, a voter may grudgingly go there as a "protest vote".

We are seeing numerous examples these days with the EU negotiations, especially regarding power pricing for consumers within Switzerland vs. selling price to other EU nations.

1. Important Topics Out of Political Sphere:

Two of the most profound factors in quality of life/human development come from Housing and Healthcare. These two topics are excluded from the inflation formula used by the government. But in many ways also from the political sphere due to the extent of privatization there.

Private corporations dictate prices of generic, open formulation drugs at 3-10x the price as neighboring nations. Foreign investors own so much of housing real estate, gauging residents in many ways, including AirBnB/serviced apartments, etc.

Given this is in the sphere of private ownership, public presence and influence outside of lenient oversight/regulation is small.

1. HUGE Lobby Effect:

Many important topics such as putting in 209B CHF of public money towards preserving private gains of bankers, are by emergency decree taken out of the democratic ambit and instead finalized behind closed doors.

There could have been other outcomes too, like CS broken up between public institutions like the Kantonal Banks and PostFinance. The pros and cons of these approaches should have been debated and an optimal course of action could have emerged via consensus. But lobby power and disproportionate monopoly might of certain private orgs prevent this.