What Kind of Democracy is Switzerland?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

The British philosopher John Stuart Mill in the 19th century famously argued that democracy can be achieved only in a single nation because free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.

But the example of  Switzerland demonstrates that this isn’t always the case. Stable liberal institutions can be secured in the absence of a shared national identity, provided that citizens possess a sense of belonging to their polity, even if they are of different ethnicities. 

The Swiss, despite their ethnic and linguistic diversity, have developed a liberal nationalism by their insistence on individual liberty and on respect for diversity.

The German, French, Italian and Romansh speakers in the country share a common national identity as Swiss over and above their separate linguistic, religious and cantonal identities. So the state combines an overarching political identity with ethno-cultural diversity.

Switzerland, though culturally divided, is a country in which amicable agreements and accommodative decision-making among the political elites has prevented the rise of secessionist movements. The Swiss political system is well known for its high stability and resistance to change.

Why has this proved a successful formula? First, a sense of distinctively Swiss political identity predated the age of nationalism and the unification of the country in 1848.

It stressed the common past of the cantons and the bonds uniting them beyond the diversity of language and religion. In other words, it was already ‘‘civic’’ or multicultural rather than ‘‘ethnic’’ or monocultural.

The 1848 constitutional settlement was unquestionably the act of a single sovereign people not a compact between states or between sovereign peoples in their respective cantons.

The cantons were retained as the constitutive units of the new federal state and no attempt to redesign their boundaries to make them coincide with ethno-linguistic patterns took place, hence mitigating any attempts at ethnic forms of nationalism.

While most of the cantons are monolingual, three of them are bilingual and one is trilingual. The boundaries of the language communities are not coterminous with cantonal borders.

Moreover, the language communities are not granted any form of veto power, even on matters intimately connected to their status such as linguistic legislation. No language community has ever demanded either a veto on constitutional change or greater asymmetry within the federal system.

They are not recognized as nations or as the component units of the federation either in the constitution or in ordinary law. The concept of nation and its related terminology is strictly reserved for the country as a whole and has never been applied to other bodies.

Each canton has two seats in the Council of States, the upper house of the federal parliament, regardless of population.

Although in some individual cantons identification with the unit appears to be as strong as identification with Switzerland, the former is not in opposition to the latter.

Finally, the Swiss tradition of consensual policy-making allows the political system to be highly integrated, with strong collaboration between state and non-state actors and between interest groups and political parties.

Clearly, it is a common political culture and shared historical memories that sustain the Swiss state. The country is a mono-national rather than a multinational state.

Henry