The Unique Version of Governance in Switzerland

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Pioneer Journal

Arguably the most successful, and certainly the most peaceful, nation in Europe, is the Swiss Confederation, or Switzerland.

Since it is rarely in the news, most people, if they think of Switzerland at all, call to mind the Alps, banks, cheese, chocolates, cuckoo clocks, Geneva-based international organizations like the Red Cross, watches, and the story of William Tell. (Also, in my case, Swiss postage stamps, which I collected as a youth; they are artistic gems.)

But there’s a lot more. It is a country which, though diverse in ethnicity, language, and religion, has held together in relative peace for centuries – perhaps a model for less fortunate places.

Switzerland comprises three distinct ethnic groups -- Germans, French and Italians; four official languages – German, French, Italian, plus Romansh (a Romance language); and two established religions – the Protestant Swiss Reformed Church and Roman Catholicism.

About two thirds of the country’s eight million citizens speak German, some 20 per cent French and seven per cent Italian. The country is historically about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant regions.

Switzerland is a true confederation. The 1999 constitution guarantees the sovereignty of the 26 cantons, leaving the federal government only those powers that the cantons entrust to it. Each canton has its own constitution, and its own parliament, government and courts.

Most of the cantons are historical entities that predate the formation of the confederation and hence have first call upon the patriotism of their citizens -- in a quarrel between themselves and the confederation, they take precedence in terms of the loyalty of their population.

There is no overall state religion, though all of the cantons except for Geneva and Neuchatel recognize either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church as official churches.

It is also the cantons, not the country, that preserve ethnicity and language. Language rights in Switzerland are accorded on a strictly territorial basis, by canton, and in 22 of them, territorial unilingualism is the price of linguistic peace. (All but nine cantons are in their official language German only.)

Indeed, since the French and German language communities make few concessions towards each other, when francophones and German speakers do business, they often end up speaking English to each other!

The nucleus of the Swiss confederation dates back to three cantons which came together some seven centuries ago. From 1515 to 1798 there was a Helvetic Confederation of 13 cantons. French armies imposed a unitary republic in 1798 but in 1815 the Congress of Vienna recognized the modern state, with its 25 cantons. (In 1980 this rose to 26 when the French-speaking Jura was carved out of German-majority Berne.)  The modern Swiss state dates back to a constitution promulgated in 1848, following a brief civil war.

Cantons strengthen the feeling of localism in many ways. For example, there is a hereditary cantonal citizenship that existed prior to the creation of the modern confederation. There are all sorts of professional and other qualifications that vary from one canton to the next, making mobility difficult. Switzerland has no capital city as such -- Berne, Zurich, and Geneva all house different government branches and offices.

Also, referenda have been a central component of Swiss cantonal decision-making since the 1830s; they have existed at the country-wide level since 1891.

Given all this, politics at the national arena are relatively unimportant. The members of the country’s 200-member lower house, the National Council, are elected via proportional representation, but the constituencies into which the country is divided are the cantons.

The Council of States, the 46-member upper house, also represents the cantons. Twenty cantons elect two members each, while the remaining six – the so-called half-cantons -- elect one each.

The Federal Council is a collegial body of seven members, elected by the two houses of parliament, and functions as the Swiss collective head of state, with each councilor, in rotation, serving a one-year term as confederation president. So at the top, in an arrangement known as the “magic formula,” a coalition of parties (now five) has governed by consensus since 1959.

 In 1848 Switzerland declared itself neutral and, though bordered by Austria, France, Germany, and Italy, managed to keep out of both 20th century world wars. It is not a member of the European Union and only joined the United Nations in 2002.

The Swiss are an insular people and have not been overly welcome to outsiders. Swiss officials said recently that they planned to restrict immigration from Western European countries; they already impose quotas on residence permits for people from eight Eastern European countries.

Situated in the heart of the continent, Switzerland is indeed a European country like no other.