It probably does work good however Switzerland got dangerously close to "something happening" this year with the 10M referendum. And it was very close, with major parts of the country showing an absurd level of ignorance - sadly I don't believe in direct democracy, the "public" can be too easily swayed one way or another even if not today, but in a few decades, with the right messaging, yes. Although, to contradict myself, perhaps there is no interest in generating upheaval in Switzerland because everyone keeps the money there.

If your measure of "success" is women gaining voting rights in 1990 (!) in the last canton, then yeah, Switzerland is doing great.

That last piece of data is one that frightened me when visiting a museum there. There's a lot of horrible things that may still as well be ongoing for all I know.