What I like most about the Swiss political system is the federal council. Seven people share the duties of the head of state and government. They each lead federal department like a ministers. The members are elected by the united federal assembly. The big parties split the seats proportional to their seats in parliament.
The role of president rotates among the members of the federal council and is limited to one year at a time. The president is just first among equals and doesn‘t have any power over the other members of the federal council.
I think this is great for the politics in Switzerland everyone from left to right is represented in the executive and you can‘t just blame the other party for the problems during their terms. This forces the parties to compromise and the opposition based on the issues and not only the party membership.
Cultural divisions along linguistic, religious and political fronts. That’s why the Cantons have so much autonomy. The Swiss Federal government has a much smaller much less high stakes political portfolio because the largest points of controversy, like naturalization, are handled by referendum at the Cantonal rather than the Federal level.
The Federal Council is also elected by the legislature, the Federal Assembly, with the precise composition negotiated through Parliamentary procedure. Every member of the Council has parties to answer to, more so than a directly elected individual with a mandate that can appeal directly to voters and have more popularity than the party backing them. As Swiss culture is far from monolithic, all Federal politics has to be conducted within a coalition. This is true in America as well, it’s just the coalitions are formed under the auspices of the political parties when they form their platforms, which is why it causes problems when you have a directly elected President that is more popular than the party that nominated him.
There’s a lot of lessons here for America, but we wouldn’t be able to transplant the Swiss system here without heavy modification. For example, almost the entirety of the referendum process described in the original article could have been a description of California’s ballot initiative process, with only minor differences in details and processes, and I would argue has been to the detriment of the State of California.
Civic understanding is just much different; the 7 seats aren't actually allocated proportionally through a legal mechanism, the parliament just voluntarily chooses to keep the balance in the executive. If they were willing to violate that they could form a coalition in the parliment and actually take all 7 seats of the executive.
Firstly, a councillor is supported by a party. If you don't have the support of your party anymore, you are gone. Secondly, a federal councillar is "above" the party. You are representing first the federal council and not the party towards the public (i.e. a federal councillor represents the opinion of the federal council and not that one of his party).
A couple of the things, why this just doesn't make much sense to do:
- Except on specific topics, the different parties don't actually agree on much. E.g. during the last cycle the center-right to right parties had the majority in parliament, but they barely got anything trough in four years
- Besides having the role of head of state being shared among 7 people, the federal government also has much less power compared to other countries. Most domestic things happen at a canton (state) and municipal level.
- Basically everything that the council decides, or parliament for that matter, can and often is challenged via popular referendums.
If you don't establish the coalitions trough the entire system they will be pretty much useless. Also because of direct democracy, I think political discourse more often centers around the issues being voted on, rather than the parties and coalitions.
That is what in my opinion is the strength of the Swiss political system. It is very hard for someone, be that a person or party to obtain enough power to really cause long lasting damage. The other side of this coin of course is, that any change will happen extremely slowly. Which can be both good and bad
that's something I never understood about US politics, what prevented Sanders from creating its own party for the US election and not run for the democratic primaries?
Presumably the proportional representation part of what he said empowers a team which has even 14% of the vote and so being independent is way more powerful than glomming together (where you’re likely to lose supporters who don’t like the guy you decided to get in bed with and you’re not likely to gain any new supporters).
And all deliberations of the Federal Council are kept secret, partially to reduce partisanship. But with all parties in there, transparency is at at least adequate levels.
My dad's family is Swiss. Three things I've picked up visiting them: 1) various members are affiliated with different parties across the political spectrum and there's a lot of interesting, productive conversation (over wine) about domestic policy, in a way most US families couldn't manage 2) even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane (esp. regarding the need for social services and market regulations) 3) they are perplexed by gun violence... while there's a very strong culture of gun ownership (tied to (generally?) compulsory military service) I get the feeling they'd ban them in an instant if they had incidents in schools
I'm Swiss. US pro-gun people (ab)use our liberal gun rights to proof their point.
But there are huge differences:
1. Concealed and unconcealed carrying is not allowed. You have to transport your weapon in a very specific way, without ammo etc. Also anyone with a gun in public would trigger a police intervention within minutes.
2. Active military personnel are allowed to stored their gun at home, but almost nobody does that. Those who do get 5 bullets, in a sealed box. They're not allowed to open it, except in war. The seal gets checked every time you go back for service.
3. Storage of legal weapons at home is very strictly regulated. Loaded guns are basically forbidden, ammunition has to be stored separately etc.
4. If you don't have a very clean history, it's almost impossible to get the right to buy guns.
5. Automatic weapons are illegal.
PS: Those "facts" are from my memory, as I don't live in Switzerland anymore. Fellow Swiss users, if there's anything wrong please correct me.
I'd like to add what I think is the most important contributing factor; a sane gun culture.
In Switzerland, every gun enthusiast expected to be a member of one local Schützenverein. While you get to meet some really crazy nuts there, these Schützenvereins are very much interested that there is a space for guns in Switzerland's culture, so they are very considerate about training of handling of weapons, maintenance and gun safety.
This creates an environment where it's save to be enthusiastic about gun while still being aware that these are weapons and not just and toy.
I mostly agree, except for some details. Back when I was of military age, some 25 years ago, it was not unusual to see military rifles carried openly, because each reservist had to attend mandatory target practice once a year, you had to transport your rifle to the shooting range, and many people used public transportation to do so.
Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other?
Back then, storing your army rifle at home was mandatory, and, while those rifles had automatic mode disabled by default, converting them back to automatic took 5 minutes and a screwdriver, with an official, documented, procedure.
Some of this has changed in the meantime. Rifles are not necessarily stored at home anymore, and it's been years since I've seen anybody but uniformed military or police carrying openly.
2. Most active military personnel store their guns at home. The sealed ammunition box doesn't exists anymore so most don't posses bullets at home. Nonetheless, it is not that hard to buy ammunition.
1. A Sturmgewehr doesnt' trigger police intervention. I see sometimes people carrying the military assault rifle on a bike or in the tram. Probably tourists/foreigners are shocked but no Swiss would call the police.
3. Not really. Swiss are generally responsible people but the truth is nobody checks this. In Germany, the police comes and checks if you store it in a weapon safe. I have guns and nobody has showed up. However, I store the ammunition in a safe.
In Switzerland, people are properly trained. My father showed me how to use guns (he was a border guard), went to a club and I did military service. It's not as easy as in the US to get a gun (i.e. without paper) but if you take the time and do the paper work, have a clean record you can get a gun without a problem.
Machine guns are actually quite rare in the US. All new machine guns were banned for civilian ownership in 1983, meaning that if you want to get one it has to be one of a small number of pre-1983 registered examples. They also come with some pretty intense storage, transit, and transfer requirements that wouldn’t surprise most Europeans. The end result is that legal machine guns are a rare collectors item, with examples starting at about $5,000 for a low quality sub-machine gun, with automatic rifles costing more than $20,0000.
I’d actually argue that the regulation of machine guns, suppressors, and short barreled rifles has been extremely effective, as it’s extremely rare to hear about any of these items being used criminally.
These differences are real but most probably don't make the difference you expect.
For example, concealed carry holders in the USA (about 5% of adults) are much less likely than the general population to be involved in a crime of any kind, and much less likely to be involved in a shooting.
Fully automatic weapons in the US are certainly more widespread than in other countries, and there are even privately owned artillery pieces and grenade launchers; but these weapons are never used to kill anyone. Eliminating or regulating them further serves no public safety purpose at all.
> even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane
This cuts both ways. I live in Switzerland and I find some conservative Swiss policies unabashedly insane in their xenophobia to a degree that the US Republican party wouldn't dare consider, by my estimation. Very loosely speaking, US conservativism seems to be skewed fiscally and religiously while Swiss conservatism is generally skewed socially.
There are a few towns in Switzerland that have actually banned asylum seekers (who are legally in Switzerland) access to public places such as public libraries or pools. [1]
About the gun part: I grew up in a gun owning family. On the other hand my dad wouldn't even let is have toy guns or water guns as he was afraid of us picking up the habit of pointing guns at fellow humans.
Much of my childhood I also shared house with an actual (full auto, large caliber) assault rifle, but my dad was always very careful to point out that war was not cool.
In fact, from my childhood, the gun owning part of the family were simultaneously the mild mannered, book reading part of the family.
My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)
My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem.
"My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem."
I would strongly argue against this. Swiss gun law is very different from US, please read my five points above. Do you think US gun violence would decrease if they adopted those points? In my opinion yes.
In my opinion the conservatives, nationalists and the National Rifle Association fight against any tighter regulations that would probably save thousands of lives.
"My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)"
That's new law due to Schengen. If you had a gun before, you don't need to do this. Three weeks is probably the compulsory military service.
I would say that most social problems are cultural. The culture is what defines what kinds of options people think that have in their life. When something isn't part of your culture you're less likely to think of it. Ie gun violence being very common somewhere means that people are more likely to resort to gun violence. We observe this effect with suicide too. I believe that gun violence, stabbings, acid attacks, bombings, terror attacks with cars etc are all like this.
Also, if the army thinks someone is getting a bit extreme, they will say "congratulations! you don't need to pass the shooting test next year ... and, by the way, please return your service rifle."
You are spot on. Swiss males having gone through military training at the age of 18, are used to guns. Though they keep their weapons in the basement or under their beds they do not treat it like a toy. When soldiers go for their training it is common to see a bunch of fairly young men boarding trains with heavy backpacks and a gun. A certain amount of respect for guns is drilled into them: you do not use a weapon carelessly.
I don't think there is any chance in hell that the US adopts and of the mechanisms described in the article, but the one thing we could adopt is a culture that discusses politics. Of course our politics are such shit when no one discusses them. Three months away from a presidential election and still no issues have been discussed by the candidates. Come to think of it, we don't actually have issues to discuss. We have a ton of problems but no one wants to discuss solving them. The problems don't become issues. They just stay perpetual problems. It's just vote for this one guy who won't address your issues and maybe won't fuck shit up too badly or vote for another guy who won't address your issues and will try to make life as miserable as possible for almost everyone.
It's taboo to discuss issues, in fact, so it's no wonder things only get worse. The people have so little power, it's really just theatre. Issues with 60%, 70%, or more public support routinely get ignored by the so called representatives. And as a culture we don't use the one tool we do have: discussion of issues. I suppose it fits in nicely with our tendency to have theoretical rights that only exist on paper. What good is the first amendment when there's nothing to discuss and no one willing to discuss things even if there was?
Folks on opposite sides of the pond have caricatured ideas about each other, because their impressions are based on anecdotal media representations. Compounding that is the fact that “parties” are very different things in the US system versus the parliamentary system. Parties in Europe have a lot of control over who runs under their banner. American parties do not. If the Republican Party operated like European parties, where the leadership selects candidates, the 2016 candidate would have been Jeb Bush of Marco Rubio, not Trump. But in an objective analysis, the Republican Party is solidly to the left of the SVP: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda.... It’s on the right edge of the mass of European center-right parties. (I would argue that this analysis somewhat overstates how far right the Republican Party is. As the article notes: “The Republican platform does not include the same bigoted policies, and its score is pushed to the right because of its emphasis on traditional morality and a ‘national way of life.’” Americans are by far the most religious developed country. In France, arguing for the maintenance of traditional French social norms is something you can do in a secular framework. Under the analysis of this survey, that doesn’t count as right wing. But there is really no way to express that same idea in the American framework while leaving religion out of it. But in this analysis, that counts as right wing.)
I’ll add that Americans are in a different stage of the same overall trend we’re seeing in the developed world. Even right-wing platforms in France or Germany have never needed to call for adherence to traditional French or German values, because it was taken for granted. 80% of Germany is still ethnic Germans. Another 10% are other kinds of Europeans. In the United States in the United States only 60% is of European ancestry, and even among those people you’ve got a mix of British, Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. European countries aren’t really multi-cultural the way America is, so there is no need even for right wing parties to make culture an issues. French being the national language of France has overwhelming acceptance (90%+). There was never a reason for right wing parties to even bring it up. But in America, making English the national language is a right-wing talking point, because Americans don’t take it for granted.
But taking culture for granted is something that is rapidly changing in Europe. Le Pen got 30% in the last French election. Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron. The dominant CDU in Germany is bleeding members to AfD. The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage, and declared the 2015 acceptance of refugees as “a mistake” that they’ve “learnt from and won’t repeat.”
I don't think the rise of the AfD in Germany has much to do with a reduction in ethnic or cultural 'purity'.
The general political consensus position in Germany has shifted considerably to the left over the last 30 or so years. This has alienated some people and the AfD is the recepticle.
Much of the rethoric employed by the AfD could have been found in the CDU just 10 or so years ago, including appeals to German culture as you mentioned. "Leitkultur" was one famous topic of debate. Other classics include "Kinder statt Inder", and "Das boot ist voll".
I'll give you just one reason why the Swiss system is currently the best on Earth. Everywhere I go people always talk about political systems as 'they have decided x, y or z'. In Switzerland people will say 'we have decided' even when they disagree with the outcome of the vote. That's a major difference and as a result the Swiss populace is typically very well educated on the matters on which they vote. This is hard to port to other countries for many reasons but it definitely is a very big benefit.
That's also a major reason, why big infrastructure projects are usually implemented in time and (mostly) in budget.
Once a project is approved by popular vote (the Gotthard Base Tunnel[1] being a good example, but not the only one) this means that funding is secured and can't be pulled, or siphoned off due to political changes.
It's not unfalable, certainly, but works for most large projects.
Once approved it's also accepted by the "losers" and not subject to political whims
One of the most important aspects of the Swiss system is that it's not that the majority vote steamrolls the minority, but that compromise is actively thought out.
For better or for worse. Because decisions can take a long time. Overall, though, it seems to work quite well.
Note: that's a bit of an idealistic view. But I'd wager that it's mostly correct
They say We because whoever they voted for (big parties) have representation in decision making. Seven members of council consist of the party representation of whoever one voted for.
That should work for any coalition government that has to reach consensus, NL is one such and here we definitely do not say 'we'. I think it has more to do with the frequent referenda and that even if the turnout is low people are in principle allowed to vote on all these issues.
Women in Switzerland did not have equal voting rights until 1990, when the last (small) canton finally made them equal. But it was only in 1971 when they first gained the right to vote at all.
A Canadian friend living in Switzerland told me that even though there aren't any legal limitations on women any more, the culture in still much more tilted towards "a woman's place is it home raising the kids" than in Canada or the US.
> “a woman’s place is [in] the home raising the kids”
This is something that is commonly said here but I don’t have any data on whether people believe it or not. There are, however, some structural reasons why women may stay at home to raise kids:
1) Paternity leave is generally poor. There’s no statutory minimum and in many cases men only get one or two days off. There will be a referendum soon on a two week statutory minimum but it’s facing a lot of opposition from people concerned with strain on small businesses. By contrast, women get something like 16 weeks.
2) Childcare is extremely expensive. I’m sure the price varies but it’s not uncommon to hear of people spending 2500CHF (approx $2500) per month per kid for childcare. It may not make sense for some families to pay so much for childcare just so both parents can work, especially if more than one child needs care.
> but it’s facing a lot of opposition from people concerned with strain on small businesses.
Wouldn't it make more sense to say that every couple can collectively take the previous duration of maternity leave? So, if it used to be 16 weeks, make that into a bucket that each parent can spend as they see fit. Each parent could take 8 weeks, or the man could take the entire 16 weeks with the woman returning to work immediately, etc.
Maybe there's other reasons why the length should be extended or what have you—I'm not familiar with the situation—but this is how you'd correct a sexist policy in a way that shouldn't make businesses any worse off.
As a German living in Switzerland, I was quite surprised by this when I came here. Just as an example, officially mandated paternal leave is 1 day. In Germany it is something like 6 months I think.
You gave to realize that Switzerland is multicultural. For instance women suffrage was given in 1959 in canton de Vaud (French speaking part of Switzerland), and that was is true in one part of Switzerland can be quite different elsewhere in the country.
The 1959 right was for local referendums only, though. The first nation wide referendum women could vote in was 1971 (and not all of them could until 1990).
The lack of a constitutional court at federal level is in fact a major weakness of the system, there have been several attempts (1999, 2011, ...) to give the supreme court that competency (similar as in the US). Without such a court, the parliament is free to pass unconstitutional laws at their own discretion (which happens from time to time). Referendums are not a very good instrument for ensuring the constitutionality of legislation. Almost no citizen reads a law proposal which for example consits of 50 pages, let alone has the time or ability to ensure constitutional compliance of such. Approval of a particular legislation at a referendum merely signals basic political acceptance and is very much prone to manipulation by media (dis-)information, political advertisments, etc. At least the supereme court de-facto acts as a limited "constituional court" to protect the rights enshrined in the European human rights convention. Very interesting read: Federalist paper No. 78
As a Swiss I agree that compatibility with the constitution is a major problem of referendums, somewhat less so of parliament decisions. One measure I'd like to see is to (a) forbid the government to send the people anything other than the proposed legal text (as other material is often very manipulative) and (b) extend the options for answering to yes/no/I don't understand. Third option in enough quantity could then trigger another round of making the text more clear and succinct and then trying again on the next voting Sunday.
I don't bother bruising anyone else's egos by suggesting how it could complement or totally solve their jurisdiction's problem, I understand that it is a smaller geographic area 1/3rd the size of Pennsylvania with a population of 8 million.
My observation is that they are a multicultural society and their political concept can work across a much larger region, but my conclusion is that its right for me!
To add to what's in the article: the Swiss have compulsory military service that puts almost all young men (and many young women) of hugely varying backgrounds together and forces them to work together in really hard contexts. This seems to do a lot to bridge divides like urban/rural, socioeconomic status, and language backgrounds.
The army was considerably downsized in the last decades, so while this used to be true for men, it isn't anymore. And the number of women is and always was more or less negligible.
Well the army was downsized yes but most men still do their military service. I just recently completed my service and almost everyone I know did it too with maybe one or two exceptions. So this is still true. Except the women part yes this is really not significant.
You can sort of opt-out by doing civilian service. This consist of general interest public work (mostly work in retirement homes, but also farmer's aide, museum guardianship, and in this time of pandemic, help doing COVID contact-tracing).
Well, there are three cases of patological societies, where one is forced to coexist with other people and unable to opt-out: school, prison and military service.
You can't opt out of society in any significant regard, and without being forcefully exposed to very distinct facets of society we close ourselves off to our own little bubbles.
By now the majority of people and the waste majority of woman do not go to military service. May 'military' service consisted of writing web application for the hospital and cleaning service as a 9 to 5 job.
>Back in 1917 Switzerland used to use majority system in the parliamentary elections. This led to a situation where the Liberal Democrats got only 40.8% of the vote, but 54.5% of the seats in parliament. The absolute majority allowed them to pass the laws, regardless of the will of the 59.2% who voted for other parties.
>Needless to say, Liberal Democrats torpedoed every attempt to replace the majority voting system by a proportional one. If the instrument of popular initiatives was not available, it would be a dead end. The voters would have to wait until Liberal Democrats lose some of their voter support. But even then, thanks to the majority system, an absolute majority in parliament could be won by another party, who would again find it difficult to abolish the system that brought it to power.
>General dissatisfaction with the state of affairs led to the launch of the popular initiative "For a proportional system of elections to the National Council" in 1918 which succeeded with 66.8% votes in favor.
>In 1919, elections were finally held using the new, proportional system and Liberal Democrats lost the absolute majority.
My theory is that the success of radical political change (peaceful or revolutionary) decreases with population size. The population of Switzerland was around 3 million in the late 1910s. The population of America was less than 3 million during the entirety of its revolutionary war.
Not being able to scale is one of the arguments that are often being use to dismiss Swiss political system, without much further explanation. However, where is the bar? I mean, I would understand if there was a limit somewhere around the Dunbar's number, but why would something that scales to 8 millions not scale to 20 or 50 millions?
The decomposition of the federation into appropriately sized cantons, which are decomposed into appropriately sized municipalities seems key here. At some point, the community level must be reached for all parties to feel they are being treated fairly. The Jurassic example shows this.
Implementing popular and legislative referendums at the federal level of the United States is a pipe dream. The powers that be have too tight a grip to relax it any. What is feasible in America today, especially in the more progressive cities like New York, is for the local city council to modify the constitution of the city and cede some its power to the people through the referendum mechanism. This would be popular and politically feasible.
The legislative referenda are probably the single most important force that driving Switzerland away from the political polarization and towards the rule by consensus.
The referendums arent the only thing, I didn't read the article but searched for konkordanz/concordance(?) and didn't find any mention of it but it is the aspect that the executive branch is formed from representatives of all parties, a bit like a parliamentary committee is formed in other democracies. That means that there isn't a real opposition/government split in their parliament and government. This promotes centrist governance. Then the referendums provide a way of correcting/opposition to the elected government.
I do think this style should be adopted wider into other democracies.
Konkordanz is very important in Switzerland. A few years ago the SVP - the biggest party by active membership in Switzerland - proclaimed to act as an opposition party from that point forth.
They where thoroughly ridiculed; there is no place for an opposition party in Switzerland, since all the major parties are part of the Executive Directorate, where the seven seats of the directorate are apportioned vaguely proportional to voter share (although there's a log of haggling involved and you need to get the minor parties to agree to chip in, since the Directorate is confirmed by the Parliament).
I do also think that it would be helpful to adopt similar power-sharing directorates instead of presidential systems where one party dominates and the other parties try to sabotage everything they do. Switzerland's system involves a lot of bickering and can be slow sometimes, but I do think it better than the back-and-forth of presidential democracies.
When I arrived in Switzerland, my in-laws would shush me if I made noise during the television referendum debates. Now I shush my kids if they make noise!
My wife and I also ask their opinions before formulating the family's votes.
I'm looking forward to future installments. I'm a naturalized citizen and I learned things from the writer!
Author here: At multiple places people pointed out that there are elements of the system missing from the article. Please note that there's going to be part II. (on decentralizaton, subsibiarity principle etc.) and part III. (on concordant democracy, magic formula, collegiality principle etc.)
There must be something more to Swiss efficiency than referenda. The article puts the case of the Jurassic question, which most of the Bernese government opposed but was ultimately gone to a referendum. In many other countries there would be nothing preventing the executive from just ignoring this question and never putting it to a referendum, even if that's the law.
In a way, lack of corruption and high level political participation are what makes the referenda work, not the other way around.
> “ The canton publishes a handbook for each ballot, which explains, in quite a detail, including graphs, maps and tables, what each referendum is about.“
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and particularly in Alameda County. We received in the mail a government publication for each election. This includes statements for and against, and/or from each candidate.
Today I’m living in the greater NYC area, and particularly in Nassau Co. I’m not especially political, but I have worked for the Board of Elections at my local polling place (fair and free elections!) I frequent my public library. And there is nothing like this publication here.
It’s shocking how much work I have to do here to get any information on the issues and candidates which is not published in a newspaper I have to buy.
It's like a 4th branch of government, the people themselves have the power to check and balance the government and legislature. The government moderates the power of the peoples' direct democracy through a protracted, formal, and open process of bringing a referendum from introduction to ballot. The legislature is pressured always to move towards the center, because any step out of line will turn into a political disaster through a referendum overruling them.
We kind of have the same direct referendum system in California. But I get the distinct impression it's lead to a lot of brain dead things, like prop 13:
Fascinating read. As an American, I've always been curious about the Swiss political system ever since I traveled the world and met a lot of Swiss people, and was shocked that unlike in my home country, they generally seemed satisfied with their government. Don't get me wrong - nobody is totally satisfied with their government, but compared to the anger and jadedness me and most of my fellow Americans have always felt about our government, it was a shock to me. 7 presidents, referendums, 11 parties with at least one seat - Switzerland sounds like a great case study in politics, especially since the country is so culturally diverse with 4 national languages.
It looks like the referendum system has had a hugely positive effect, mostly because it's a real-time check on their representatives' power since citizens can directly change the law, forcing representatives to respect the interests of the population. In the U.S, our only recourse as citizens is to vote for one of the Democratic or Republican party candidates every 2-6 years (Senate elections are every 6 years), and being locked into a two-party system means the parties tend to gravitate towards the status quo. Ultimately referendums result in more power in the people, as well as a more politically active and educated citizenry as opposed to power being delegated to a relatively elite political class.
The following passage stood out to me:
> Back in 1917 Switzerland used to use majority system in the parliamentary elections. This led to a situation where the Liberal Democrats got only 40.8% of the vote, but 54.5% of the seats in parliament. The absolute majority allowed them to pass the laws, regardless of the will of the 59.2% who voted for other parties.
> Needless to say, Liberal Democrats torpedoed every attempt to replace the majority voting system by a proportional one. If the instrument of popular initiatives was not available, it would be a dead end. The voters would have to wait until Liberal Democrats lose some of their voter support. But even then, thanks to the majority system, an absolute majority in parliament could be won by another party, who would again find it difficult to abolish the system that brought it to power.
> General dissatisfaction with the state of affairs led to the launch of the popular initiative "For a proportional system of elections to the National Council" in 1918 which succeeded with 66.8% votes in favor.
This is a prime example of what would otherwise be a permanent government failure being rectified by the referendum system. Only the referendum system can fix a problem that persists because it is against the majority lawmakers' interests to fix it. It seems that voting rules in general should not be decided by lawmakers because they are incapable of voting against their own self-interest.
This is why despite all the complaints in the U.S. about the electoral college, winner-take all elections, gerrymandering, and being locked into a two-party system, nothing will every change since fixing the problem will always be against the interests of the majority party. Referendum seems to be the only solution here. Not that referendum guarantees change either, but it's much easier to vote against the party system as a citizen than as a party member who lives in and has benefited from the system. Expecting lawmakers to vote in the public good is like expecting CEOs to vote themselves a fair salary.
I was also impressed at the extent to which the public is educated on both sides of the referendum, with all sides having a chance at fair representation. Hard to imagine this kind of neutrality in the U.S. This is also made much easier by the fact that referendums must focus on a single matter, rather than conflating multiple unrelated issues (reducing military spending + increasing spending on social services).
It's amazing that past referendums included votes on universal basic income (2016) and full reserve banking (2018), both very forward thinking policies that haven't even been in the public debate in the U.S. except for basic income thanks to Andrew Yang's presidential run. Whereas the U.S. lags behind the world politically, unable to fix problems that Americans have been complaining about for decades like the skyrocketing cost of healthcare and university, countries like Switzerland have their act together and are pioneering forward into the future.
As an American, I'm completely in favor of tearing down our system and replacing it with something like the Swiss's. Direct democracy is the only true form of democracy, and representative democracy is like the halfway point between real democracy and monarchy. It's sad that representative democracy has been conflated with democracy, when it doesn't actually give the citizens the power to do anything other than vote for a new Democratic or Republican party representative every couple years. It's no wonder Americans are so dissatisfied and jaded with their government and rioting on the streets.
I grew up in Switzerland and left the country about 10 years ago. There's a lot to admire about the Swiss political system. However, I feel there are also substantial flaws with it that the author fails to address. Not everything in Swiss politics is rosy.
One of the biggest issues, I find, is that there is no constitutional oversight e.g. in form of a court. This not only leads to things like minarets being explicitly forbidden by the constitution (!) even though at the time of that initiative there were... 3 minarets in all of Switzerland. It also leads to a lot of issues when the government has to deal with contradictory requirements. The mass immigration initiative by the SVP was a great example: implementing it literally would have meant cancelling a lot of international contracts, which nobody really wanted. In the end, I think they reached some weird compromise solution (I had long left the country by then), but nobody can argue that that's the way the law was "intended" (and indeed, IIRC, the SVP tried to land another initiative that would have required the government to implement the first initiative literally... I'm not even sure what kind of legal sense that is supposed to make; thankfully, that initiative was rejected).
In that sense, it's not true that the constitution is "unambiguous". The government still has to draft specific laws according to new articles in the constitution and there's still much leeway there.
I also disagree that Switzerland is not polarised. It's true that the system itself, with a government involving all the major parties, acts as a stability mechanism, but the SVP has been trying to break that stability for years and years now, mounting attack after attack at the established consensus by using the kind of right-wing populism that has now become popular in other parts of the world as well. One particularly pernicious instance was when they were trying to hold the political system hostage in 2007, because the parliament didn't re-elect one of the SVP government members (Christoph Blocher). Blocher was thought to be intolerable by many, so they elected another SVP member, Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf, instead. However, the SVP simply proclaimed that they wouldn't accept this and that if Schlumpf were to accept the vote, she would be expelled from her own party. It turned out that it was impossible for the SVP to just expel Schlumpf, though, so they had to expel the whole cantonal section that she belonged to, which I just find insane. Schlumpf went on to be a quite respected government member, but the SVP wouldn't stop whining for years about how the government wasn't representing the political parties anymore, even though they had created that situation completely on their own. In the end, Schlumpf abdicated after some years and they elected another SVP member that was slightly more tolerable.
Finally, we also have to look at voting participation, which is very low in Switzerland. I believe this comes partially from the fact that it's just too exhausting to have to keep up with dozens of referenda and initiatives each year, especially when they overwhelmingly get rejected. I do think that the numbers of signatures needed to start an initiative or referendum should be increased; I think it's currently at 100k which in this day and age means that everyone and their dog can make the people vote about something totally insane.
There's going to be a long section about the Blocher case in part III. However, honest question: Do you see SVP succeeding in polarizing the society? How exactly? Have the friends voting for SVP started treating you as an enemy? Do you fear expressing your opinion at particular places? Etc.
Judging from the kinds of examples you give (fear of expressing one's own opinion etc.), I'm thinking that you might be talking about a level of polarisation that I mostly associate with the US currently. That's certainly not what is going on in Switzerland, but it's also not what is going on in many other parts of the world, so I don't think "not as bad as the US" is a sufficient criterion for "not polarised".
All of these examples (and many, many more, going back over decades) attempt to paint the political opposition as subhuman and as selling out the country to "bad people", and don't forget: this is the most powerful party in Switzerland (though, to be fair, in Switzerland with its multi-party system that doesn't mean more than 25-30%).
There are also numerous examples of the SVP using the same sort of language and imagery when referring to immigrants, muslims, etc., but while equally repulsive, I'll grant you that it's not an example of polarisation necessarily.
By contrast, I now live in Germany, and before the rise of the far-right AfD party just a couple of years ago, this sort of rhetoric and imagery would have been completely unimaginable. Even now, the AfD is politically isolated and its politics, language and imagery are reviled pretty much across the political spectrum, whereas in Switzerland, the SVP has succeeded in "normalising" this sort of political discourse over decades.
Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf's given name is "Evelyn" and her (adopted?) family name is "Widmer-Schlumpf", so the correct way to refer to her just by her family name would be "Widmer-Schlumpf". [I am Swiss BTW.]
Please keep in mind that many countries / cultures, even Western ones, have a naming tradition different from "first given name / second given name / single family name".
I was typing on my mobile phone and was getting tired of typing out the full name, but you are correct (incidentally, it wouldn't be different in Germany).
The title reminded me of the late SlateStarCodex's "more than you ever wanted to know" blog posts, which were pretty informative. The one on melatonin was particularly useful, I think.
"More than you ever wanted to know" is a great name for an article format, where a single topic is explored in depth. I don't think there's any other term with that meaning in English, except, maybe, "monograph", but that doesn't make such a nice title.
There are laws to prevent felons from having guns. Most people who murder with guns are felons. Some people want to make more laws to restrict gun ownership even further. So in the future maybe people who haven’t gotten a training certificate and who have not passed various tests cannot own a gun. In this case, people who carry around pistols might be seen almost as an extension of the police force who only become active in the most extreme situations where police are not available, because they are so thoroughly screened and trained. The man who head-shifted a terrorist in a Texas church comes to mind.
In this scenario, the number of guns carried by criminals would stay the same. And the amount of people murdered by guns will be the same. You know why? Because stop and frisk is racist. According to everyone, stopping people for 2 minutes to check them for guns is abhorrent, racist and evil. So criminals will always have guns in this country. There is no reason to pass laws one way or another.
Some say that stop and frisk is unconstitutional. I think I agree with this. So it follows that it is embedded in the constitution that criminals will be carrying around pistols. There is no changing this. I think that the only reasonable response is to allow ordinary people who are not criminals, not obviously insane and etc to carry pistols. It’s written in the constitution that we are allowed to do something like that. So if liberals want to be constitutionalists about stop and frisk, then conservatives have the right to be constitutionalists about carrying guns. If criminals are allowed to carry guns in practice then it is only reasonable to let their victims carry guns too.
Or, y’know, like everywhere else, criminals likely wouldn’t carry guns and certainly wouldn’t shoot people because “hey, I got caught” is not usually an imminent life and death situation and they’d risk a significantly higher sentence.
Of course, this only works when you don’t hand out 10+ year prison sentences for property crime in the first place.
Didn’t read the article but I met a Swiss guy at a hostel the other day. He told me how citizens can prompt a vote on almost any issue — almost a direct democracy, in his words. He said that a vote was successfully prompted to limit the gap between the salaries of ceos and low level employees. It was voted down. My only remark was that if the United States had a system like that, the country would promptly destroy itself.
By voting through feel-good proposals that are ultimately misinformed and destructive. It’s happening anyway through our indirect democracy but at a slower rate.
What I like most about the Swiss political system is the federal council. Seven people share the duties of the head of state and government. They each lead federal department like a ministers. The members are elected by the united federal assembly. The big parties split the seats proportional to their seats in parliament. The role of president rotates among the members of the federal council and is limited to one year at a time. The president is just first among equals and doesn‘t have any power over the other members of the federal council.
I think this is great for the politics in Switzerland everyone from left to right is represented in the executive and you can‘t just blame the other party for the problems during their terms. This forces the parties to compromise and the opposition based on the issues and not only the party membership.
What stops these 7 members forming two coalitions and having it regress to a two-party polarization?
Cultural divisions along linguistic, religious and political fronts. That’s why the Cantons have so much autonomy. The Swiss Federal government has a much smaller much less high stakes political portfolio because the largest points of controversy, like naturalization, are handled by referendum at the Cantonal rather than the Federal level.
The Federal Council is also elected by the legislature, the Federal Assembly, with the precise composition negotiated through Parliamentary procedure. Every member of the Council has parties to answer to, more so than a directly elected individual with a mandate that can appeal directly to voters and have more popularity than the party backing them. As Swiss culture is far from monolithic, all Federal politics has to be conducted within a coalition. This is true in America as well, it’s just the coalitions are formed under the auspices of the political parties when they form their platforms, which is why it causes problems when you have a directly elected President that is more popular than the party that nominated him.
There’s a lot of lessons here for America, but we wouldn’t be able to transplant the Swiss system here without heavy modification. For example, almost the entirety of the referendum process described in the original article could have been a description of California’s ballot initiative process, with only minor differences in details and processes, and I would argue has been to the detriment of the State of California.
3 replies →
Civic understanding is just much different; the 7 seats aren't actually allocated proportionally through a legal mechanism, the parliament just voluntarily chooses to keep the balance in the executive. If they were willing to violate that they could form a coalition in the parliment and actually take all 7 seats of the executive.
Firstly, a councillor is supported by a party. If you don't have the support of your party anymore, you are gone. Secondly, a federal councillar is "above" the party. You are representing first the federal council and not the party towards the public (i.e. a federal councillor represents the opinion of the federal council and not that one of his party).
20 replies →
A couple of the things, why this just doesn't make much sense to do:
- Except on specific topics, the different parties don't actually agree on much. E.g. during the last cycle the center-right to right parties had the majority in parliament, but they barely got anything trough in four years
- Besides having the role of head of state being shared among 7 people, the federal government also has much less power compared to other countries. Most domestic things happen at a canton (state) and municipal level.
- Basically everything that the council decides, or parliament for that matter, can and often is challenged via popular referendums.
If you don't establish the coalitions trough the entire system they will be pretty much useless. Also because of direct democracy, I think political discourse more often centers around the issues being voted on, rather than the parties and coalitions.
That is what in my opinion is the strength of the Swiss political system. It is very hard for someone, be that a person or party to obtain enough power to really cause long lasting damage. The other side of this coin of course is, that any change will happen extremely slowly. Which can be both good and bad
that's something I never understood about US politics, what prevented Sanders from creating its own party for the US election and not run for the democratic primaries?
42 replies →
Presumably the proportional representation part of what he said empowers a team which has even 14% of the vote and so being independent is way more powerful than glomming together (where you’re likely to lose supporters who don’t like the guy you decided to get in bed with and you’re not likely to gain any new supporters).
And all deliberations of the Federal Council are kept secret, partially to reduce partisanship. But with all parties in there, transparency is at at least adequate levels.
What I like best about the Federal Council is Alain Berset, our current health minister. That guy rocks!
The guy who introduced a public transport mask requirement after the epidemic is over? Rocks isn't the word I'd use.
4 replies →
If you like like the Swiss federal council, you might also find interesting the San Marinese political system with the two captains.
My dad's family is Swiss. Three things I've picked up visiting them: 1) various members are affiliated with different parties across the political spectrum and there's a lot of interesting, productive conversation (over wine) about domestic policy, in a way most US families couldn't manage 2) even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane (esp. regarding the need for social services and market regulations) 3) they are perplexed by gun violence... while there's a very strong culture of gun ownership (tied to (generally?) compulsory military service) I get the feeling they'd ban them in an instant if they had incidents in schools
I'm Swiss. US pro-gun people (ab)use our liberal gun rights to proof their point.
But there are huge differences:
1. Concealed and unconcealed carrying is not allowed. You have to transport your weapon in a very specific way, without ammo etc. Also anyone with a gun in public would trigger a police intervention within minutes.
2. Active military personnel are allowed to stored their gun at home, but almost nobody does that. Those who do get 5 bullets, in a sealed box. They're not allowed to open it, except in war. The seal gets checked every time you go back for service.
3. Storage of legal weapons at home is very strictly regulated. Loaded guns are basically forbidden, ammunition has to be stored separately etc.
4. If you don't have a very clean history, it's almost impossible to get the right to buy guns.
5. Automatic weapons are illegal.
PS: Those "facts" are from my memory, as I don't live in Switzerland anymore. Fellow Swiss users, if there's anything wrong please correct me.
I'd like to add what I think is the most important contributing factor; a sane gun culture.
In Switzerland, every gun enthusiast expected to be a member of one local Schützenverein. While you get to meet some really crazy nuts there, these Schützenvereins are very much interested that there is a space for guns in Switzerland's culture, so they are very considerate about training of handling of weapons, maintenance and gun safety. This creates an environment where it's save to be enthusiastic about gun while still being aware that these are weapons and not just and toy.
5 replies →
I mostly agree, except for some details. Back when I was of military age, some 25 years ago, it was not unusual to see military rifles carried openly, because each reservist had to attend mandatory target practice once a year, you had to transport your rifle to the shooting range, and many people used public transportation to do so.
Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other?
Back then, storing your army rifle at home was mandatory, and, while those rifles had automatic mode disabled by default, converting them back to automatic took 5 minutes and a screwdriver, with an official, documented, procedure.
Some of this has changed in the meantime. Rifles are not necessarily stored at home anymore, and it's been years since I've seen anybody but uniformed military or police carrying openly.
3 replies →
One correction
2. Most active military personnel store their guns at home. The sealed ammunition box doesn't exists anymore so most don't posses bullets at home. Nonetheless, it is not that hard to buy ammunition.
Your fellow Swiss user
1. A Sturmgewehr doesnt' trigger police intervention. I see sometimes people carrying the military assault rifle on a bike or in the tram. Probably tourists/foreigners are shocked but no Swiss would call the police. 3. Not really. Swiss are generally responsible people but the truth is nobody checks this. In Germany, the police comes and checks if you store it in a weapon safe. I have guns and nobody has showed up. However, I store the ammunition in a safe.
In Switzerland, people are properly trained. My father showed me how to use guns (he was a border guard), went to a club and I did military service. It's not as easy as in the US to get a gun (i.e. without paper) but if you take the time and do the paper work, have a clean record you can get a gun without a problem.
2 replies →
Machine guns are actually quite rare in the US. All new machine guns were banned for civilian ownership in 1983, meaning that if you want to get one it has to be one of a small number of pre-1983 registered examples. They also come with some pretty intense storage, transit, and transfer requirements that wouldn’t surprise most Europeans. The end result is that legal machine guns are a rare collectors item, with examples starting at about $5,000 for a low quality sub-machine gun, with automatic rifles costing more than $20,0000.
I’d actually argue that the regulation of machine guns, suppressors, and short barreled rifles has been extremely effective, as it’s extremely rare to hear about any of these items being used criminally.
These differences are real but most probably don't make the difference you expect.
For example, concealed carry holders in the USA (about 5% of adults) are much less likely than the general population to be involved in a crime of any kind, and much less likely to be involved in a shooting.
Fully automatic weapons in the US are certainly more widespread than in other countries, and there are even privately owned artillery pieces and grenade launchers; but these weapons are never used to kill anyone. Eliminating or regulating them further serves no public safety purpose at all.
New York City has similar regulations about legal gun ownership and storage and transportation.
Sounds very similar to the Canadian regulations.
> even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane
This cuts both ways. I live in Switzerland and I find some conservative Swiss policies unabashedly insane in their xenophobia to a degree that the US Republican party wouldn't dare consider, by my estimation. Very loosely speaking, US conservativism seems to be skewed fiscally and religiously while Swiss conservatism is generally skewed socially.
There are a few towns in Switzerland that have actually banned asylum seekers (who are legally in Switzerland) access to public places such as public libraries or pools. [1]
[1] Swiss introduce apartheid-like restrictions: Local authorities ban asylum seekers from public places https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-introd...
About the gun part: I grew up in a gun owning family. On the other hand my dad wouldn't even let is have toy guns or water guns as he was afraid of us picking up the habit of pointing guns at fellow humans.
Much of my childhood I also shared house with an actual (full auto, large caliber) assault rifle, but my dad was always very careful to point out that war was not cool.
In fact, from my childhood, the gun owning part of the family were simultaneously the mild mannered, book reading part of the family.
My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)
My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem.
"My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem."
I would strongly argue against this. Swiss gun law is very different from US, please read my five points above. Do you think US gun violence would decrease if they adopted those points? In my opinion yes.
In my opinion the conservatives, nationalists and the National Rifle Association fight against any tighter regulations that would probably save thousands of lives.
43 replies →
"My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)"
That's new law due to Schengen. If you had a gun before, you don't need to do this. Three weeks is probably the compulsory military service.
I would say that most social problems are cultural. The culture is what defines what kinds of options people think that have in their life. When something isn't part of your culture you're less likely to think of it. Ie gun violence being very common somewhere means that people are more likely to resort to gun violence. We observe this effect with suicide too. I believe that gun violence, stabbings, acid attacks, bombings, terror attacks with cars etc are all like this.
Also, if the army thinks someone is getting a bit extreme, they will say "congratulations! you don't need to pass the shooting test next year ... and, by the way, please return your service rifle."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYJ5V2HYy4&t=222
(but then again, life should be sympa, gemütlich, simpatica, shouldn't it?)
You are spot on. Swiss males having gone through military training at the age of 18, are used to guns. Though they keep their weapons in the basement or under their beds they do not treat it like a toy. When soldiers go for their training it is common to see a bunch of fairly young men boarding trains with heavy backpacks and a gun. A certain amount of respect for guns is drilled into them: you do not use a weapon carelessly.
I don't think there is any chance in hell that the US adopts and of the mechanisms described in the article, but the one thing we could adopt is a culture that discusses politics. Of course our politics are such shit when no one discusses them. Three months away from a presidential election and still no issues have been discussed by the candidates. Come to think of it, we don't actually have issues to discuss. We have a ton of problems but no one wants to discuss solving them. The problems don't become issues. They just stay perpetual problems. It's just vote for this one guy who won't address your issues and maybe won't fuck shit up too badly or vote for another guy who won't address your issues and will try to make life as miserable as possible for almost everyone.
It's taboo to discuss issues, in fact, so it's no wonder things only get worse. The people have so little power, it's really just theatre. Issues with 60%, 70%, or more public support routinely get ignored by the so called representatives. And as a culture we don't use the one tool we do have: discussion of issues. I suppose it fits in nicely with our tendency to have theoretical rights that only exist on paper. What good is the first amendment when there's nothing to discuss and no one willing to discuss things even if there was?
Folks on opposite sides of the pond have caricatured ideas about each other, because their impressions are based on anecdotal media representations. Compounding that is the fact that “parties” are very different things in the US system versus the parliamentary system. Parties in Europe have a lot of control over who runs under their banner. American parties do not. If the Republican Party operated like European parties, where the leadership selects candidates, the 2016 candidate would have been Jeb Bush of Marco Rubio, not Trump. But in an objective analysis, the Republican Party is solidly to the left of the SVP: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda.... It’s on the right edge of the mass of European center-right parties. (I would argue that this analysis somewhat overstates how far right the Republican Party is. As the article notes: “The Republican platform does not include the same bigoted policies, and its score is pushed to the right because of its emphasis on traditional morality and a ‘national way of life.’” Americans are by far the most religious developed country. In France, arguing for the maintenance of traditional French social norms is something you can do in a secular framework. Under the analysis of this survey, that doesn’t count as right wing. But there is really no way to express that same idea in the American framework while leaving religion out of it. But in this analysis, that counts as right wing.)
I’ll add that Americans are in a different stage of the same overall trend we’re seeing in the developed world. Even right-wing platforms in France or Germany have never needed to call for adherence to traditional French or German values, because it was taken for granted. 80% of Germany is still ethnic Germans. Another 10% are other kinds of Europeans. In the United States in the United States only 60% is of European ancestry, and even among those people you’ve got a mix of British, Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. European countries aren’t really multi-cultural the way America is, so there is no need even for right wing parties to make culture an issues. French being the national language of France has overwhelming acceptance (90%+). There was never a reason for right wing parties to even bring it up. But in America, making English the national language is a right-wing talking point, because Americans don’t take it for granted.
But taking culture for granted is something that is rapidly changing in Europe. Le Pen got 30% in the last French election. Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron. The dominant CDU in Germany is bleeding members to AfD. The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage, and declared the 2015 acceptance of refugees as “a mistake” that they’ve “learnt from and won’t repeat.”
I don't think the rise of the AfD in Germany has much to do with a reduction in ethnic or cultural 'purity'.
The general political consensus position in Germany has shifted considerably to the left over the last 30 or so years. This has alienated some people and the AfD is the recepticle.
Much of the rethoric employed by the AfD could have been found in the CDU just 10 or so years ago, including appeals to German culture as you mentioned. "Leitkultur" was one famous topic of debate. Other classics include "Kinder statt Inder", and "Das boot ist voll".
4 replies →
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-election--2019-resu...
To determine where the US parties are through their manifestos seems flawed since they are so candidate-platform centric.
> Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron.
This is still a bullshit cherry-picked figure. The village baker would likely get 45% h2h too. Macron is deeply unpopular due to his "reforms".
> The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage,
The one that got so unpopular that she's already announced her resignation earlier this year?
4 replies →
True: in the United States only 1,6% is of American ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United...
I'll give you just one reason why the Swiss system is currently the best on Earth. Everywhere I go people always talk about political systems as 'they have decided x, y or z'. In Switzerland people will say 'we have decided' even when they disagree with the outcome of the vote. That's a major difference and as a result the Swiss populace is typically very well educated on the matters on which they vote. This is hard to port to other countries for many reasons but it definitely is a very big benefit.
That's also a major reason, why big infrastructure projects are usually implemented in time and (mostly) in budget.
Once a project is approved by popular vote (the Gotthard Base Tunnel[1] being a good example, but not the only one) this means that funding is secured and can't be pulled, or siphoned off due to political changes.
It's not unfalable, certainly, but works for most large projects.
Once approved it's also accepted by the "losers" and not subject to political whims
One of the most important aspects of the Swiss system is that it's not that the majority vote steamrolls the minority, but that compromise is actively thought out.
For better or for worse. Because decisions can take a long time. Overall, though, it seems to work quite well.
Note: that's a bit of an idealistic view. But I'd wager that it's mostly correct
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
Spot on! Swiss have the unity that I've never seen anywhere else.
The Swiss Confederation is, in spirit, a confederation of citizens, and not of states.
From what I have learned from a comment in this same thread,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882816
They say We because whoever they voted for (big parties) have representation in decision making. Seven members of council consist of the party representation of whoever one voted for.
That should work for any coalition government that has to reach consensus, NL is one such and here we definitely do not say 'we'. I think it has more to do with the frequent referenda and that even if the turnout is low people are in principle allowed to vote on all these issues.
2 replies →
Related:
Women in Switzerland did not have equal voting rights until 1990, when the last (small) canton finally made them equal. But it was only in 1971 when they first gained the right to vote at all.
A Canadian friend living in Switzerland told me that even though there aren't any legal limitations on women any more, the culture in still much more tilted towards "a woman's place is it home raising the kids" than in Canada or the US.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
> “a woman’s place is [in] the home raising the kids”
This is something that is commonly said here but I don’t have any data on whether people believe it or not. There are, however, some structural reasons why women may stay at home to raise kids:
1) Paternity leave is generally poor. There’s no statutory minimum and in many cases men only get one or two days off. There will be a referendum soon on a two week statutory minimum but it’s facing a lot of opposition from people concerned with strain on small businesses. By contrast, women get something like 16 weeks.
2) Childcare is extremely expensive. I’m sure the price varies but it’s not uncommon to hear of people spending 2500CHF (approx $2500) per month per kid for childcare. It may not make sense for some families to pay so much for childcare just so both parents can work, especially if more than one child needs care.
> but it’s facing a lot of opposition from people concerned with strain on small businesses.
Wouldn't it make more sense to say that every couple can collectively take the previous duration of maternity leave? So, if it used to be 16 weeks, make that into a bucket that each parent can spend as they see fit. Each parent could take 8 weeks, or the man could take the entire 16 weeks with the woman returning to work immediately, etc.
Maybe there's other reasons why the length should be extended or what have you—I'm not familiar with the situation—but this is how you'd correct a sexist policy in a way that shouldn't make businesses any worse off.
As a German living in Switzerland, I was quite surprised by this when I came here. Just as an example, officially mandated paternal leave is 1 day. In Germany it is something like 6 months I think.
Uhh, no. It's 14 weeks for the mother, but, granted, a few days for the father.
Some companies may grant more, but that's voluntary.
1 reply →
You gave to realize that Switzerland is multicultural. For instance women suffrage was given in 1959 in canton de Vaud (French speaking part of Switzerland), and that was is true in one part of Switzerland can be quite different elsewhere in the country.
The 1959 right was for local referendums only, though. The first nation wide referendum women could vote in was 1971 (and not all of them could until 1990).
That's still later than 90% of Europe, not really high praise :-)
On the other hand, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvodASdJ5Hs
The lack of a constitutional court at federal level is in fact a major weakness of the system, there have been several attempts (1999, 2011, ...) to give the supreme court that competency (similar as in the US). Without such a court, the parliament is free to pass unconstitutional laws at their own discretion (which happens from time to time). Referendums are not a very good instrument for ensuring the constitutionality of legislation. Almost no citizen reads a law proposal which for example consits of 50 pages, let alone has the time or ability to ensure constitutional compliance of such. Approval of a particular legislation at a referendum merely signals basic political acceptance and is very much prone to manipulation by media (dis-)information, political advertisments, etc. At least the supereme court de-facto acts as a limited "constituional court" to protect the rights enshrined in the European human rights convention. Very interesting read: Federalist paper No. 78
As a Swiss I agree that compatibility with the constitution is a major problem of referendums, somewhat less so of parliament decisions. One measure I'd like to see is to (a) forbid the government to send the people anything other than the proposed legal text (as other material is often very manipulative) and (b) extend the options for answering to yes/no/I don't understand. Third option in enough quantity could then trigger another round of making the text more clear and succinct and then trying again on the next voting Sunday.
That sounds exploitable. People would strategically vote "I don't understand" to delay the initiative.
3 replies →
I'm a big fan of the Swiss political system.
I don't bother bruising anyone else's egos by suggesting how it could complement or totally solve their jurisdiction's problem, I understand that it is a smaller geographic area 1/3rd the size of Pennsylvania with a population of 8 million.
My observation is that they are a multicultural society and their political concept can work across a much larger region, but my conclusion is that its right for me!
To add to what's in the article: the Swiss have compulsory military service that puts almost all young men (and many young women) of hugely varying backgrounds together and forces them to work together in really hard contexts. This seems to do a lot to bridge divides like urban/rural, socioeconomic status, and language backgrounds.
The army was considerably downsized in the last decades, so while this used to be true for men, it isn't anymore. And the number of women is and always was more or less negligible.
Well the army was downsized yes but most men still do their military service. I just recently completed my service and almost everyone I know did it too with maybe one or two exceptions. So this is still true. Except the women part yes this is really not significant.
1 reply →
> compulsory military service
You can sort of opt-out by doing civilian service. This consist of general interest public work (mostly work in retirement homes, but also farmer's aide, museum guardianship, and in this time of pandemic, help doing COVID contact-tracing).
Well, there are three cases of patological societies, where one is forced to coexist with other people and unable to opt-out: school, prison and military service.
I'm not really seeing how that's bad.
You can't opt out of society in any significant regard, and without being forcefully exposed to very distinct facets of society we close ourselves off to our own little bubbles.
1 reply →
By now the majority of people and the waste majority of woman do not go to military service. May 'military' service consisted of writing web application for the hospital and cleaning service as a 9 to 5 job.
>Back in 1917 Switzerland used to use majority system in the parliamentary elections. This led to a situation where the Liberal Democrats got only 40.8% of the vote, but 54.5% of the seats in parliament. The absolute majority allowed them to pass the laws, regardless of the will of the 59.2% who voted for other parties.
>Needless to say, Liberal Democrats torpedoed every attempt to replace the majority voting system by a proportional one. If the instrument of popular initiatives was not available, it would be a dead end. The voters would have to wait until Liberal Democrats lose some of their voter support. But even then, thanks to the majority system, an absolute majority in parliament could be won by another party, who would again find it difficult to abolish the system that brought it to power.
>General dissatisfaction with the state of affairs led to the launch of the popular initiative "For a proportional system of elections to the National Council" in 1918 which succeeded with 66.8% votes in favor.
>In 1919, elections were finally held using the new, proportional system and Liberal Democrats lost the absolute majority.
My theory is that the success of radical political change (peaceful or revolutionary) decreases with population size. The population of Switzerland was around 3 million in the late 1910s. The population of America was less than 3 million during the entirety of its revolutionary war.
Not being able to scale is one of the arguments that are often being use to dismiss Swiss political system, without much further explanation. However, where is the bar? I mean, I would understand if there was a limit somewhere around the Dunbar's number, but why would something that scales to 8 millions not scale to 20 or 50 millions?
The decomposition of the federation into appropriately sized cantons, which are decomposed into appropriately sized municipalities seems key here. At some point, the community level must be reached for all parties to feel they are being treated fairly. The Jurassic example shows this.
Implementing popular and legislative referendums at the federal level of the United States is a pipe dream. The powers that be have too tight a grip to relax it any. What is feasible in America today, especially in the more progressive cities like New York, is for the local city council to modify the constitution of the city and cede some its power to the people through the referendum mechanism. This would be popular and politically feasible.
Note that there were was significant civil unrest at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_Swiss_general_strike
Consensus is ingrained in Swiss mentality.
The legislative referenda are probably the single most important force that driving Switzerland away from the political polarization and towards the rule by consensus.
The referendums arent the only thing, I didn't read the article but searched for konkordanz/concordance(?) and didn't find any mention of it but it is the aspect that the executive branch is formed from representatives of all parties, a bit like a parliamentary committee is formed in other democracies. That means that there isn't a real opposition/government split in their parliament and government. This promotes centrist governance. Then the referendums provide a way of correcting/opposition to the elected government.
I do think this style should be adopted wider into other democracies.
Konkordanz is very important in Switzerland. A few years ago the SVP - the biggest party by active membership in Switzerland - proclaimed to act as an opposition party from that point forth.
They where thoroughly ridiculed; there is no place for an opposition party in Switzerland, since all the major parties are part of the Executive Directorate, where the seven seats of the directorate are apportioned vaguely proportional to voter share (although there's a log of haggling involved and you need to get the minor parties to agree to chip in, since the Directorate is confirmed by the Parliament).
I do also think that it would be helpful to adopt similar power-sharing directorates instead of presidential systems where one party dominates and the other parties try to sabotage everything they do. Switzerland's system involves a lot of bickering and can be slow sometimes, but I do think it better than the back-and-forth of presidential democracies.
2 replies →
Concordance is more or less a consequence of referenda.
An opposition party with enough support could force a referendum on every law. Giving them power prevents this tactic.
When I arrived in Switzerland, my in-laws would shush me if I made noise during the television referendum debates. Now I shush my kids if they make noise!
My wife and I also ask their opinions before formulating the family's votes.
I'm looking forward to future installments. I'm a naturalized citizen and I learned things from the writer!
Author here: At multiple places people pointed out that there are elements of the system missing from the article. Please note that there's going to be part II. (on decentralizaton, subsibiarity principle etc.) and part III. (on concordant democracy, magic formula, collegiality principle etc.)
As a Papierli-Schweizer let me thank you for the most comprehensive & understandable description of the Swiss system I have come across.
I am truly appreciate for the time and effort it most have taken you and I am looking forward to your part II & III.
There must be something more to Swiss efficiency than referenda. The article puts the case of the Jurassic question, which most of the Bernese government opposed but was ultimately gone to a referendum. In many other countries there would be nothing preventing the executive from just ignoring this question and never putting it to a referendum, even if that's the law.
In a way, lack of corruption and high level political participation are what makes the referenda work, not the other way around.
I think the rotating executive is the most interesting aspect of Swiss politics.
And the fact that they are expected to "speak with one voice".
Which forces them to find consensus.
2 replies →
> “ The canton publishes a handbook for each ballot, which explains, in quite a detail, including graphs, maps and tables, what each referendum is about.“
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and particularly in Alameda County. We received in the mail a government publication for each election. This includes statements for and against, and/or from each candidate.
Today I’m living in the greater NYC area, and particularly in Nassau Co. I’m not especially political, but I have worked for the Board of Elections at my local polling place (fair and free elections!) I frequent my public library. And there is nothing like this publication here.
It’s shocking how much work I have to do here to get any information on the issues and candidates which is not published in a newspaper I have to buy.
It's like a 4th branch of government, the people themselves have the power to check and balance the government and legislature. The government moderates the power of the peoples' direct democracy through a protracted, formal, and open process of bringing a referendum from introduction to ballot. The legislature is pressured always to move towards the center, because any step out of line will turn into a political disaster through a referendum overruling them.
We kind of have the same direct referendum system in California. But I get the distinct impression it's lead to a lot of brain dead things, like prop 13:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition#...
"Palace of Nations, the headquarters of UN, is located in Geneva and was located there for a long time even before Switzerland has become a member."
It is not THE HQ. Just one of them. NY is the first in precedence.
Fascinating read. As an American, I've always been curious about the Swiss political system ever since I traveled the world and met a lot of Swiss people, and was shocked that unlike in my home country, they generally seemed satisfied with their government. Don't get me wrong - nobody is totally satisfied with their government, but compared to the anger and jadedness me and most of my fellow Americans have always felt about our government, it was a shock to me. 7 presidents, referendums, 11 parties with at least one seat - Switzerland sounds like a great case study in politics, especially since the country is so culturally diverse with 4 national languages.
It looks like the referendum system has had a hugely positive effect, mostly because it's a real-time check on their representatives' power since citizens can directly change the law, forcing representatives to respect the interests of the population. In the U.S, our only recourse as citizens is to vote for one of the Democratic or Republican party candidates every 2-6 years (Senate elections are every 6 years), and being locked into a two-party system means the parties tend to gravitate towards the status quo. Ultimately referendums result in more power in the people, as well as a more politically active and educated citizenry as opposed to power being delegated to a relatively elite political class.
The following passage stood out to me:
> Back in 1917 Switzerland used to use majority system in the parliamentary elections. This led to a situation where the Liberal Democrats got only 40.8% of the vote, but 54.5% of the seats in parliament. The absolute majority allowed them to pass the laws, regardless of the will of the 59.2% who voted for other parties.
> Needless to say, Liberal Democrats torpedoed every attempt to replace the majority voting system by a proportional one. If the instrument of popular initiatives was not available, it would be a dead end. The voters would have to wait until Liberal Democrats lose some of their voter support. But even then, thanks to the majority system, an absolute majority in parliament could be won by another party, who would again find it difficult to abolish the system that brought it to power.
> General dissatisfaction with the state of affairs led to the launch of the popular initiative "For a proportional system of elections to the National Council" in 1918 which succeeded with 66.8% votes in favor.
This is a prime example of what would otherwise be a permanent government failure being rectified by the referendum system. Only the referendum system can fix a problem that persists because it is against the majority lawmakers' interests to fix it. It seems that voting rules in general should not be decided by lawmakers because they are incapable of voting against their own self-interest.
This is why despite all the complaints in the U.S. about the electoral college, winner-take all elections, gerrymandering, and being locked into a two-party system, nothing will every change since fixing the problem will always be against the interests of the majority party. Referendum seems to be the only solution here. Not that referendum guarantees change either, but it's much easier to vote against the party system as a citizen than as a party member who lives in and has benefited from the system. Expecting lawmakers to vote in the public good is like expecting CEOs to vote themselves a fair salary.
I was also impressed at the extent to which the public is educated on both sides of the referendum, with all sides having a chance at fair representation. Hard to imagine this kind of neutrality in the U.S. This is also made much easier by the fact that referendums must focus on a single matter, rather than conflating multiple unrelated issues (reducing military spending + increasing spending on social services).
It's amazing that past referendums included votes on universal basic income (2016) and full reserve banking (2018), both very forward thinking policies that haven't even been in the public debate in the U.S. except for basic income thanks to Andrew Yang's presidential run. Whereas the U.S. lags behind the world politically, unable to fix problems that Americans have been complaining about for decades like the skyrocketing cost of healthcare and university, countries like Switzerland have their act together and are pioneering forward into the future.
As an American, I'm completely in favor of tearing down our system and replacing it with something like the Swiss's. Direct democracy is the only true form of democracy, and representative democracy is like the halfway point between real democracy and monarchy. It's sad that representative democracy has been conflated with democracy, when it doesn't actually give the citizens the power to do anything other than vote for a new Democratic or Republican party representative every couple years. It's no wonder Americans are so dissatisfied and jaded with their government and rioting on the streets.
I grew up in Switzerland and left the country about 10 years ago. There's a lot to admire about the Swiss political system. However, I feel there are also substantial flaws with it that the author fails to address. Not everything in Swiss politics is rosy.
One of the biggest issues, I find, is that there is no constitutional oversight e.g. in form of a court. This not only leads to things like minarets being explicitly forbidden by the constitution (!) even though at the time of that initiative there were... 3 minarets in all of Switzerland. It also leads to a lot of issues when the government has to deal with contradictory requirements. The mass immigration initiative by the SVP was a great example: implementing it literally would have meant cancelling a lot of international contracts, which nobody really wanted. In the end, I think they reached some weird compromise solution (I had long left the country by then), but nobody can argue that that's the way the law was "intended" (and indeed, IIRC, the SVP tried to land another initiative that would have required the government to implement the first initiative literally... I'm not even sure what kind of legal sense that is supposed to make; thankfully, that initiative was rejected).
In that sense, it's not true that the constitution is "unambiguous". The government still has to draft specific laws according to new articles in the constitution and there's still much leeway there.
I also disagree that Switzerland is not polarised. It's true that the system itself, with a government involving all the major parties, acts as a stability mechanism, but the SVP has been trying to break that stability for years and years now, mounting attack after attack at the established consensus by using the kind of right-wing populism that has now become popular in other parts of the world as well. One particularly pernicious instance was when they were trying to hold the political system hostage in 2007, because the parliament didn't re-elect one of the SVP government members (Christoph Blocher). Blocher was thought to be intolerable by many, so they elected another SVP member, Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf, instead. However, the SVP simply proclaimed that they wouldn't accept this and that if Schlumpf were to accept the vote, she would be expelled from her own party. It turned out that it was impossible for the SVP to just expel Schlumpf, though, so they had to expel the whole cantonal section that she belonged to, which I just find insane. Schlumpf went on to be a quite respected government member, but the SVP wouldn't stop whining for years about how the government wasn't representing the political parties anymore, even though they had created that situation completely on their own. In the end, Schlumpf abdicated after some years and they elected another SVP member that was slightly more tolerable.
Finally, we also have to look at voting participation, which is very low in Switzerland. I believe this comes partially from the fact that it's just too exhausting to have to keep up with dozens of referenda and initiatives each year, especially when they overwhelmingly get rejected. I do think that the numbers of signatures needed to start an initiative or referendum should be increased; I think it's currently at 100k which in this day and age means that everyone and their dog can make the people vote about something totally insane.
There's going to be a long section about the Blocher case in part III. However, honest question: Do you see SVP succeeding in polarizing the society? How exactly? Have the friends voting for SVP started treating you as an enemy? Do you fear expressing your opinion at particular places? Etc.
Sorry for the late answer.
Judging from the kinds of examples you give (fear of expressing one's own opinion etc.), I'm thinking that you might be talking about a level of polarisation that I mostly associate with the US currently. That's certainly not what is going on in Switzerland, but it's also not what is going on in many other parts of the world, so I don't think "not as bad as the US" is a sufficient criterion for "not polarised".
But the SVP does consistently put up posters such as this one: https://img.nzz.ch/2019/8/19/a8db938f-4e3a-4eb4-9eec-31102df... ("should we allow liberals and 'nice people' to destroy Switzerland?")
Or this one: https://www.sozialarchiv.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/04_So... ("This is what liberals want")
Or: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/1lgJnhTI6CNiyT7h_-8D... ("free-for-all? no")
All of these examples (and many, many more, going back over decades) attempt to paint the political opposition as subhuman and as selling out the country to "bad people", and don't forget: this is the most powerful party in Switzerland (though, to be fair, in Switzerland with its multi-party system that doesn't mean more than 25-30%).
There are also numerous examples of the SVP using the same sort of language and imagery when referring to immigrants, muslims, etc., but while equally repulsive, I'll grant you that it's not an example of polarisation necessarily.
By contrast, I now live in Germany, and before the rise of the far-right AfD party just a couple of years ago, this sort of rhetoric and imagery would have been completely unimaginable. Even now, the AfD is politically isolated and its politics, language and imagery are reviled pretty much across the political spectrum, whereas in Switzerland, the SVP has succeeded in "normalising" this sort of political discourse over decades.
Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf's given name is "Evelyn" and her (adopted?) family name is "Widmer-Schlumpf", so the correct way to refer to her just by her family name would be "Widmer-Schlumpf". [I am Swiss BTW.]
Please keep in mind that many countries / cultures, even Western ones, have a naming tradition different from "first given name / second given name / single family name".
I was typing on my mobile phone and was getting tired of typing out the full name, but you are correct (incidentally, it wouldn't be different in Germany).
Yeah, they keep proposing things they can't follow through, that's quite weird.
The UE relations are a particular sore spot, which they keep dancing around, but no one wants to address directly.
I don't think you should call "low" a voting participation of about 50% - even on thorny issues as the length of cattle horns.
It's definitely lower than e.g. Germany, where participation is more than 70%.
The title reminded me of the late SlateStarCodex's "more than you ever wanted to know" blog posts, which were pretty informative. The one on melatonin was particularly useful, I think.
"More than you ever wanted to know" is a great name for an article format, where a single topic is explored in depth. I don't think there's any other term with that meaning in English, except, maybe, "monograph", but that doesn't make such a nice title.
There are laws to prevent felons from having guns. Most people who murder with guns are felons. Some people want to make more laws to restrict gun ownership even further. So in the future maybe people who haven’t gotten a training certificate and who have not passed various tests cannot own a gun. In this case, people who carry around pistols might be seen almost as an extension of the police force who only become active in the most extreme situations where police are not available, because they are so thoroughly screened and trained. The man who head-shifted a terrorist in a Texas church comes to mind.
In this scenario, the number of guns carried by criminals would stay the same. And the amount of people murdered by guns will be the same. You know why? Because stop and frisk is racist. According to everyone, stopping people for 2 minutes to check them for guns is abhorrent, racist and evil. So criminals will always have guns in this country. There is no reason to pass laws one way or another.
Some say that stop and frisk is unconstitutional. I think I agree with this. So it follows that it is embedded in the constitution that criminals will be carrying around pistols. There is no changing this. I think that the only reasonable response is to allow ordinary people who are not criminals, not obviously insane and etc to carry pistols. It’s written in the constitution that we are allowed to do something like that. So if liberals want to be constitutionalists about stop and frisk, then conservatives have the right to be constitutionalists about carrying guns. If criminals are allowed to carry guns in practice then it is only reasonable to let their victims carry guns too.
Or, y’know, like everywhere else, criminals likely wouldn’t carry guns and certainly wouldn’t shoot people because “hey, I got caught” is not usually an imminent life and death situation and they’d risk a significantly higher sentence.
Of course, this only works when you don’t hand out 10+ year prison sentences for property crime in the first place.
How is this connected to the post?
In the context of this post, "the constitution" would be:
https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/...
Didn’t read the article but I met a Swiss guy at a hostel the other day. He told me how citizens can prompt a vote on almost any issue — almost a direct democracy, in his words. He said that a vote was successfully prompted to limit the gap between the salaries of ceos and low level employees. It was voted down. My only remark was that if the United States had a system like that, the country would promptly destroy itself.
How would the country destroy itself?
By voting through feel-good proposals that are ultimately misinformed and destructive. It’s happening anyway through our indirect democracy but at a slower rate.
3 replies →