That's actually a very hard question.
I think it's good in many ways, however it allows some messy consequences. As an example, we don't vote for the Federal Council directly, that means that we don't have these populist election campaign with the first goal to throw as much dirt at each other as possible and spending millions of shady money. But as we have the direct democracy that allows the common people to vote for laws directly, all of these negative aspects are just transported to this area.
Parties use votes to play power games. They seed fear and none-sense to turn the public's opinion. It becomes more and more extreme and less and less meaningful.
So it's a good thing, but has also a lot of negative aspects. Just as an example, "we" just decided to make our relations to the EU much worse, based on irrational fears and right-winged propaganda.
That's of course my point of view. The more right-winged people would disagree ;-)