Direct Democracy in Switzerland

Gregory Fossedal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351522212
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Only one country in the world--Switzerland--is a direct democracy, in which, to an extent, the people pass their own laws, judge the constitutionality of statutes, and even have written, in effect, their own constitution. In this propitious volume, Gregory Fossedal reports on the politics and social fabric of what James Bryce has called "the nation that has taken the democratic idea to its furthest extent." The lessons Fossedal presents, at a time of dissatisfaction with the role of money and privileged elites in many Western democracies, are at once timely and urgent.

Part 1

Conception

1

Pilgrimage

Most visitors to Schwyz ride down from Zürich on the train. The approach is pleasant, as is practically all of Switzerland. For Switzerland, however, it is an ordinary beauty—a picture postcard on the rack, but not the one of the four or five you would buy. The small-town buildings are tired, a bit faded; not the crisp whites and criss-crossing browns that you expect, and usually find. There are no spectacular castles or mountain passes, or if there are, they have eluded me on more than one trip as grey mist slumps around the train.

About halfway through the one-hour trip it hits you that just because a place is historic doesn’t mean it’s going to be inspiring. Maybe it is better to keep expectations low.

But to anyone making a pilgrimage to the Schwyz archives, there’s also a sense of anticipation. Each stop brings you closer to a piece of history. The geography reinforces this, the train winding along a river surrounded by mountains. One cannot see far horizontally; the view is mainly upward. So you never know; on rounding the next curve, you might arrive at your stop.

When we do arrive at the Schwyz station, though, the scene, despite the gloomy weather, is anything but Death in Venice. The first thing to catch my eye is a medium-sized news stand. Medium-sized for O’Hare airport or Penn Station, that is: For a small rural town, this one, like many in the country, is huge. (An article in the paper several days later boasted, accurately by my experience, that the Swiss consume more newspapers per capita than the people of any other country—twice the European average.)

My thoughts are broken by the hiss of bus brakes. Like taxi cabs at La Guardia airport, they have rushed up to meet the train. There is added hurry; the drivers seem to know (and it concerns them) that they are about ninety seconds late. Swiss punctuality may be a stereotype, but it is an accurate one.

Climbing onto the bus are five or six others: A pair of teenagers; a woman of about forty-five years, her hair dyed an extreme brassy red-orange color of the type normally seen only on teenagers in America, but which is surprisingly popular among older women in Switzerland; and a man with muddy boots and blue jeans and a red plaid shirt. The man is talking with his son in a dialect that’s hard to make out, but he uses the German word for “fertilizer.” The bus pulls back, bumping and hissing me into the real, tangible world.

A short ride, mostly uphill, brings me to my destination: The Schwyz information center, near the post office. Actually, the information center has closed. Luckily, a travel agency next to where the old center was helps me out with directions to the archives. The young woman there, who is fluent in English and Japanese, has obviously given these directions before, and has a map of the town to point out the simple turns one needs to make. But there is no fanfare about it—no official transfer of duties, and, one senses, no great hue or cry in the town or among the occasional tourists about the loss of the center. With characteristic low-key efficiency, the travel agency appears to have stepped in, seamlessly, for the old center.

The archives are closed until 2 p.m. anyway, and something urges me to soak in a little bit of the town. It is more inspiring than either the train ride or the literature about Schwyz have led me to believe. A tour book describes a somewhat dingy village “cowering under the peaks of the My then.” In fact, the buildings—though none is more than a few stories tall—seem to tower above the mountains. This is only an illusion resulting from the structure of the town, but it feels no less real. Though the streets are newly paved, they are narrow, some dating to Medieval times. This makes it difficult to stand back and get a perspective accurately contrasting the buildings with the mountain’s far greater height.

Whatever the cause of this effect, an unpretentious nobility whispers from the old white homes and inns, the granite town hall at the end of the street, and even the old wooden storehouse and stone tower that both predate the Bundesbrief itself. And far from cowering, they seem—partly due to the layout of the streets, partly due to a natural romanticization—to gently rival the mountain and the sky. There is a quiet greatness.

August 1, 1291—that is the date that brings me to a small mountain town in central Switzerland.

The year isn’t as famous as 1776. And the document that was signed—now called the Bundesbrief, or what might be translated as a “letter/contract/ charter of allegiance/confederation/bond”—isn’t as well known as the Magna Carta. On that date, though, human freedom made an important advance. It is the oldest written record of a confederation that gradually became Switzerland. It led directly to extended charters of freedom for the tiny states near here, for a period of two decades and, ultimately, to an historic military victory that confirmed their freedom in 1315: the battle of Morgarten.

What happened, in the words of one historian, not only explains the birth of Switzerland, it “is the birth of Switzerland.” As well, like America’s own declaration of independence, this is a story of more or less “people’s diplomacy,” in this case between the rugged communities of the central Alps.

There is probably no exact historical enactment of the signing of a social contract. As Rousseau suggested, the “social contract” is more an abstraction from events than an event itself. But the Swiss Bundesbrief has some of its characteristics. It comes close.

Does any of this matter? That is to say, Why study Switzerland?

One obvious reason is Switzerland’s material and, one might say, cultural or social greatness. It is perhaps the richest country in the world in terms of per capita income, which is about $40,000 per year. The Swiss economy is one of those—Taiwan, Japan—that seem blessed by a poverty of physical resources. The country mines neither precious metals nor fossil fuels, and is even, despite its dairy industry, significantly dependent on imports of certain foods. Yet by thrift and invention, the Swiss people have made pioneering advances in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other industries. When the country’s jobless rate nosed above 1 percent late in the twentieth century, Swiss politicians, straight-faced, talked about the nation’s “employment crisis.”

Culturally, the Swiss have managed to accommodate language, religious, and ethnic diversity with unusual harmony. The country has three official languages in wide use and a variety of ethnic groups. Switzerland has been a nation of immigrants and refugees in Europe for centuries, and continues today: close to 20 percent of the resident population is foreign. Yet crime and social tension are low, cohesion high. Even prosperous countries with a degree of Switzerland’s language “divisions,” as they are called in other countries, seem nagged by the complexity: Canada and Belgium, to name just two. Poor countries in these conditions are simply overwhelmed. Yet the Swiss navigate between French, German, and Italian in their market places, their civic institutions, and in everyday life, with an easy grace. Many university presidents and mayors in the United States, and heads of state in Asia or Central and Eastern Europe, have cause to envy and perhaps emulate Switzerland.

An interesting statistic is that when asked an open-ended question as to what makes them proud about their country, more than 60 percent of Swiss give as their first answer something having to do with their political system. In many countries, rich and poor, neither politics nor the system is so esteemed.

These very achievements, however, have generated a certain bias in recent thought about Switzerland. The country is regarded as somewhat narrow and calculating by some, merely fortunate by others; at best, as a kind of bucolic land of women with puffy white sleeves and yodeling—a lovely cheese and chocolate store, but no more. The notion is that Switzerland has enjoyed centuries of what one American writer called “uninterrupted peace and prosperity.”

These notions of Switzerland, however, are a myth. What is worse—for myths can do great good—they are a debilitating myth. They make it hard to think seriously about Switzerland—and therefore, hard to take advantage of the lessons it may have to offer.

In fact, parts of Switzerland were occupied by French troops for a generation (1792-1813). The Swiss fought a civil war at about the time America and Europe fought theirs (1847), and were surrounded and land-locked by Nazi Germany (1940-1944). The country suffered bitter religious divisions for centuries, and in recent years (1970s) had to combat—albeit successfully—a “secession” movement that featured domestic terrorism, in what is now the independent canton of Jura. Despite the liberal attitudes of the Swiss, women were not empowered to vote until 1971. And some Roman Catholic orders were outlawed until very recently. In short, Switzerland has not been immune to the plagues of history, and if it is healthier now, it is because its people seem to have found cures for at least some of the more fatal diseases.

Therefore, in an age when many countries have not yet been able to surmount some of these difficulties, there is much to be learned from the Swiss. One might say there is a certain urgency. It is doubtful whether the solutions of a country like Switzerland can be directly transplanted to Bosnia, Poland, Vietnam, Korea, or South Africa. It is also doubtful, however, that these countries will be able to solve their religious and ethnic divisions, natural partitions, or the tensions of federalism without applying measures based upon certain general principles. As the Swiss have worked on many of these successfully, it is only by a perverse insularity, or a stubborn ignorance, that one would want to ignore the Swiss experience.

Europeans, meanwhile, are now engaged in a great process of economic integration. They are learning that this implies a degree of political and even spiritual integration as well—quite a task given the state of the polyglot that is Europe. What nation has more to teach on these matters than Switzerland? In the narrow sense, Swiss education and cultural systems have achieved a remarkable degree of integration of three great European cultures. In a broader sense, as the Swiss parliamentarian Andreas Gross has observed, it may just be that to deal with the politics of European Union as a kind of unpleasant afterthought may be a backward approach. It is possible, if the Swiss are any guide, that Europe can gain much by considering such matters as a truly federal assembly, and a right of approval of laws by referendum, first rather than last. Indeed the Swiss, in a sense, have already accomplished on a small scale what Europe hopes to do on a larger scale. The measurements are different, but not necessarily the operating forces. Thus there may be lessons for Europe in the experience of what might be called the first European nation.

Some Swiss wonder whether they should join the European Union. But there is another question: Should Europe, in some ways, join Switzerland? For America (yes, even for America), it is possible to learn as well. This is especially true given the concerns about the state of our politics, our institutions, and our mores.

In recent years, one hears words such as “responsibility” and “citizenship” more and more often—surely a healthy sign. But the mere fact that these are raised in the manner of a plea, or as a proposed counter-culture, suggests how far out of practice we have fallen. Switzerland, since the time of Machiavelli, has been characterized by a tenacious and somewhat mystical patriotism and civic dynamism. In Switzerland, even today, one feels somewhat transplanted into the American democracy observed by Alexis de Tocqueville: a regime characterized by bustling activity, a “constant generation” of community activities, private initiatives, and civic improvements and associations.

In his classic, Modern Democracies, James Bryce outlines some of the reasons why students of history and politics should take a special interest in Switzerland.¹ One justification, of course, is its longevity. “It contains communities in which popular government dates farther back than anywhere else in the world.” There are practical reasons as well. The Swiss reliance on, and affection for, local government has generated “a greater variety of institutions based on democratic principles than any other country, greater even than the Federations of America and Australia can show.”

Most important, however, is the extent to which Switzerland has placed a unique degree of faith in the people. Through its use of initiative and referendum at the national level, its citizen-based legislature, and similar devices, the Swiss have established a very different kind of democracy than is seen anywhere else. As Bryce writes:

Among the modern democracies, Switzerland has the highest claim to be studied…. Switzerland has pushed democratic doctrines farther, and worked them out more consistently, than any other European state.

In short, it is an important laboratory not just for a collection of ideas, plural, but for an idea, singular, that unifies these innovations: the most populist (in the objective sense of the term) democracy in the world.

Switzerland answers the potential question of the political scientist or citizen: What happens if we place so much faith in the people that we make them lawmakers? The much earlier experiences with this far-reaching democracy, as in the city-states of Greece, took place without the benefit of the advances in communication that make it possible to have popular government without having government by physical assembly.

Switzerland has taken democracy down a path not taken by others. Does this path, like the “road less traveled by,” to paraphrase Robert Frost,² differ only sentimentally from the other? Or is the Swiss path meaningfully different, perhaps even advantageous?

The great dynasties of Europe and Asia, in other words, have much experience. But the Swiss have much experience with democracy. America is great in space; a majestic continent of vast powers. But Switzerland is great in time; a bold experiment sweeping back almost a millennium.

To understand democracy in Switzerland, then, we must survey not merely the country’s topographical features, or even its present institutions, but its origins. We must travel not merely to Schwyz, but to 1291 and earlier—to the Bundesbrief, and the still more ancient heritage of democratic practices implied by history and the language of the Bundesbrief and the earlier Freibriefe themselves. The roots of democracy in Switzerland are deep indeed.

Notes

1.    James Bryce, Modern Democracies, MacMillan Company, 1921, Volume I of II.

2.    From Collected Works of Robert Frost, New York, Viking, 1977.

Part 2

History

2

1291

“Switzerland is a product of both creation, in its constitution of 1848, and evolution, in hundreds of years of people in sovereign states, learning to get along. You must understand both elements to understand Switzerland today.”—Edgar Brunner

If you look at a relief map—which is almost essential to understand Switzerland—you can see the logic of Switzerland’s development in a series of quasi-independent villages, towns, and cities. If you were to place a group of marbles at the center of the map, among some of the highest peaks of the Alps, they would eventually meander to the long, Norway-shaped plain of the northwest, and the lakes of Como and Maggiore to the southeast. But the route the marbles would travel would bounce down around the Lake of Luzern, and of course the Saint Bernard and Gotthard Passes routes.

This imaginary route of the marbles more or less defines the outer border of the three original cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as well as those that soon became part of the Swiss confederation: Luzern, Zürich, Bern, Zug, Appenzell, and the lands of what was later Aargau. The main grooves, some six or seven, are chopped up into dozens of smaller rivulets. They form semi-isolated units suitable for similarly independent human communities. A town planner setting up Switzerland from scratch today would probably follow this design, toward which the country was evolving naturally from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.

To extend on our analogy above, if you were to sprinkle small ball bearings on our relief map, they would bump and nudge their way down to settle into these nooks and crannies very much where the actual towns are today. Even the “great plain” of Switzerland, stretching from Geneva in the southwest across Lausanne, Bern, Basel, and Zürich up to the Bodensee in the northeast, is diced into a hundred or more natural towns—of which there are more than 3,000 in S...