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Federalism in Switzerland*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Vernon Bogdanor
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Extract

‘FEDERALISM’, CLAIMED THE SWISS PHILOSOPHER, DENIS DE Rougemont, ‘rests upon the love of complexity, by contrast with the brutal simplicity which characterises the totalitarian spirit’. It would be hard to deny that complexity is the most striking feature of federal government in Switzerland. To comprehend it fully, one would have to analyse the history, politics and atmosphere of each of the twenty-six cantons, for each is a political system in itself; and there is no such animal as a ‘typical’ canton. Political scientists have studied one or two cantons in some depth, and there are also impressionistic accounts of cantonal life, but there is no really satisfactory comparative analysis of the cantons as a whole. Further, many Swiss cantons are ‘closed' societies, difficult for the foreigner to penetrate and not easily accessible to the academic inquirer. The political scientist needs to acquire the skills of the anthropologist in addition to those of the analyst of political institutions if he is to make headway. It is difficult, therefore, to give anything more than a very general impression of the principles lying behind federal government in Switzerland, an impression which is bound to be, to some degree at least, misleading. For of no country more than Switzerland is it more correct to say that the truth lies in the minute particulars and not in generalities.

The complexity of Swiss federalism is a consequence of the fact that the Swiss have embraced more completely than any other democracy that essential principle, the leitmotiv, of federalism — the sharing of power. Switzerland is indeed an extreme example of federalism, just as it is an extreme example of the application of the principles of democracy and of neutrality in foreign affairs.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , Winter 1988 , pp. 69 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1988

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Footnotes

*

I should like to thank Rudy Andeweg, Ralf Dahrendorf, Christopher Hughes, Michael Steed and Peter Pulzer for their very helpful comments on an earher draft. They are not, however, responsible for my conclusions.

References

1 ‘Textes sur le fédéralisme’, p.21 in CADMOS, No. 36, 1986.

2 Allemann, F. R., 25 mal die Schweiz [now 26, of course], Munich, Piper, Revised Edition, 1977 Google Scholar, offers the reflections of a brilliant journalist.

3 See Hughes, Christopher, ‘Constitutionalism and Democracy’ in Bogdanor, Vernon (ed.), Constitutions in Democratic Politics, Aldershot, Gower, 1988 Google Scholar.

4 See the data from the Federal Statistical Office reprinted in McRae, Kenneth D., Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Switzerland, Waterloo, Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983, p. 50 Google Scholar.

5 Half-cantons have the same constitutional status as full cantons, the only difference being that they have only one seat each, not two, in the Swiss upper house, the Council of States and count for half as much as full cantons in constitutional referendums.

6 Ross, Edward A., The Principles of Sociology, New York, Century, 1920, pp. 164–5Google Scholar. Italics in original. Cited in Kerr, Henry H. Jr, Switzerland: Social Cleavages and Partisan Conflict, Sage Professional Paper in Contemporary Political Sociology, Vol. I, No. 06–002, London and Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, pp. 8–9 Google Scholar.

7 Lijphart, Arend, ‘Linguistic Fragmentation and Other Dimensions of Cleavage: A Comparison of Belgium, Canada and Switzerland’, paper presented to IPSA, Montreal, 08 1973 Google Scholar.

8 Kerr, op. cit., p. 31.

9 Geneva, the ‘Protestant Rome’, actually has a small Catholic majority if one takes into account not just Swiss citizens, as in Table 1, but the population as a whole. See McRae, op. cit., p. 77.

10 I owe this point and much eke that is in this paper to the insights of Benjamin Barber.

11 Royal Commission on Local Government in England: Minutes of Evidence, para. 442.

12 Germann, Raimund E., ‘Policy Implementation: The Case of Swiss Administrative Federalism’, unpublished paper delivered at the European Consortium for Political Research, 1976, p. 6 Google Scholar.

13 Klöti, Ulrich, ‘Political Ideak, Financial Interests and Intergovernmental relations: New Aspects of Swiss Federalism’, p. 94 belowGoogle Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 4.

15 Klöti, op. cit., p. 97.

16 Cited in Germann, Raimund E. and Weibel, Ernest (eds.), Handbuch Politisches System der Schweiz, Vol. 3, Föderalismus, Berne, Paul Haupt, 1986, p. 27 Google Scholar.

17 Cited in Schuetz, C. F., ‘Constitutional Change — Swiss Style’, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Occasional Papers, no. 9, p. 199 Google Scholar.

18 Ibid.

19 HMSO, Royal Commission on the Constitution, London, 1973, Research Paper 1, ‘Federalism and Decentralisation in Germany’ by Nevil Johnson, para. 6.

20 See, for example, Nüssli, Kurt, Schmid, Ulrich and Klöti, Ulrich, ‘Interlocked Federalism in Switzerland: How Does it Affect Democracy?’, paper presented to European Consortium for Political Research, Salzburg, 1984 Google Scholar.

21 Frognier, A. P., ‘Federal and Partly Federal Systems, Institutions and Conflict Management: Some Western European Examples’ in Rea, Desmond (ed.), Political Co-operation in Divided Societies, Dublin, 1982, p. 203 Google Scholar.

22 Cited in C. F. Schuetz, op. cit., p. 147.

23 Frenkel, Max, ‘Swiss Federalism in the Twentieth Century’ in Luck, J. Murray (ed.), Modern Switzerland, Palo Alto, SPOSS, 1978, p. 333 Google Scholar.

24 Frenkel, op. cit., pp. 333–4.

25 Schuetz, op. cit., p. 110.

26 Ibid., p. 109.

27 Ibid., p. 108.

28 Girod, R., ‘Geography of the Swiss Party System’ in Allardt, E. and Littunen, Y. (eds), Transactions of the Westermarck Society, Helsinki, 1964 Google Scholar; and Kerr op. cit., p. 30.

29 Ibid.

30 Slabbert, F. Van Zyl and Welsh, David, South Africa's Options: Strategies for Sharing Power, Cape Town, David Philip, 1979, p. 148 Google Scholar.

31 ‘… those spiritual things that we call institutions’, Maitland, F. W., ‘The Survival of Archaic Communities’, Law Quarterly Review, Vol. ix, 1893, p. 211 Google Scholar.

32 Compare Lijphart, Arend, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968 Google Scholar and Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1977 Google Scholar.

33 op. cit., p. 20.