Democracies can't really be condensed into one political moment; that is why they are so effective against dictatorships. Dictatorships have to make sense to one person.

The usual pattern is authoritarians do something stupid, democracies do something stupid but also erratic, then time passes then the democracies reorganise to try something new and the dictatorship gets stuck in a rut. Eventually the democracy tries something that works to the amazement of all observers. The authoritarians are still pushing the same tired old plan of failure.

Democracy doesn't have any secret sauce for making good decisions. Large groups of people are actually notoriously stupid. But they are much more responsive to situations where the government's official plan is obviously not working and the evidence is rolling in.

This is a valid criticism, but does not detract from the fact that Switzerland is pretty much a model democracy.

Power is extremely decentralized, not just down to the Cantons, but the counties and then the cities/townships (translated to rough US equivalents) also have a huge degree of autonomy. For any law or political decision that affects a Swiss citizen, it is almost guaranteed that it can be overturned be plebiscite (or in local issues by just showing up at meetings).

The late adoption of Women's suffrage is just a consequence of this system, which is biased towards inaction by design. On the plus side they have not had ideological extremists run their country, or had political violence on the level of some of their neighbors (Italy, Germany, France).

The ancient Greek, who invented the word "democracy" (δημοκρατία / dēmokratía), would disagree with your understanding of it.

Aristoteles divided forms of government benefiting their rulers into tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies as follows: one, few, many. (Analogous to these three you have monarchy, aristocracy, and polity, which are to the benefit of all). Many here does not mean everyone, otherwise you would have to let children and non-citizens vote as well. However in a later chapter he does break things down further and, for instance, establishes a spectrum ranging from polity to democracy. However the most extreme form of democracy on that spectrum would be unrecognizable to you: Every free citizen is the government, only slaves aren't. There are no laws. If that sounds like nonsense to you, it is. He was mostly firing shots at athen's democracy and not really be fair at all.

Also do note that here democracy is the selfish variant of polity, and would thus is considered the "bad kind", inferior to even monarchy and aristocracy, but still preferable to oligarchy and tyranny.

>This highly authoritative article from World Economic Forum

You mean highly biased? Switzerland's direct democracy is the antithesis of what the WEF stands for.

Their definition of democracy is quite arbitrary, I would argue that any country where women and minorities cannot vote isn’t a democracy, it is according to them.

The United States is not and never has been a democracy. The Senate and the SCOTUS are not democratic institutions.

There seem to be some tautologies happening here. There are only 2 major parties in the US Congress. Bipartisan bills, somewhat by definition, are going to be passed by both parties. Similarly, since there are 2 major parties, if legislation is proposed by one party then it would pass unless the other blocks it.

I don't see how you're expecting things to work differently. Would we expect Democrat-sponsored legislation to fail for reasons apart from Republican opposition?

> The reverse really is not true.

I doubt that is a true statement, but assuming it is then logically that would just mean that Republicans only propose legislation after they have talked to the Democrats and confirmed they are willing to vote it through. But that would suggest the Republicans are avoiding opportunities to kick up a fuss which doesn't sound like the US Congress we all know and love.

> c.f. current bills for border security

Unrelated note but it is amazing to me that the US has been an entity for a couple of centuries now and doesn't have legislation already in place to control the border.

that's interested because you created a point I didn't make, in order to discredit the point I did make

I won't call it a strawman argument since the grandparent post did say "inability to functionally govern and reach bi-partisan support for a lot of meaningful issues renders us helpless to improve bad systems", I was not making a point about bills passing

my only, isolated point, is that it is valid to be frustrated by the ways in which the parties are the same.

you decided to talk about one way you believe they are different. its fine if that was a misunderstanding of my point, but if you're not aware of any unproductive way the parties are the same, then this discussion isn't for you.

Republicans block bills because they're stuffed full of unrelated things (by design - that way they can easily be painted as the bad guys - which is working, see your own comment). I'm not saying that the reverse doesn't happen - perhaps Democrats are okay with bloated bills, I dunno.

Good rule of thumb is when a bill is blocked by one party, go find out everything that's in it and what parts the blocking party objected to. I guarantee it won't be the stuff the bill is named after.