Rolf Büchi has a PhD in Technical Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and studied Political Science, History and Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. He has written a number of books and articles on direct democracy and is one of the authors of the Guidebook to Direct Democracy. He has developed the General Typology of Modern Direct Democracy which has been adopted by the IRI Europe Council in February 2009. He is in charge of the educational programmes of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe.