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Swiss Culture: Swiss Politics, Democracy & Neutrality

Robert Easton

Switzerland is widely held to be the world's most democratic country.

All any citizen needs to do to challenge a law is collect 50,000 signatures opposing the law in 100 days and a national referendum must be held.

To challenge the constitution they must collect 100,000 signatures within 18 months to trigger a referendum, and need a simple majority of the popular vote and a majority among the states.

This makes Switzerland's democracy the most direct in the world - in no other country do the citizens have such direct control over the law.

Recent referendums have been on GM crops (banned for five years), embryo stem cell research (allowed), joining the UN (formally joined in 2002), and scrapping the army (idea shot down in flames).

Switzerland is a federal parliamentary democratic republic. The legislature is divided into two houses. The upper house is called the Council of States, where each canton (administrative region) is represented (most cantons have two representatives, six of the smaller ones only have one each).

The representatives serve four year terms, but in Switzerland's democratic tradition their mode of election is determined by the canton they represent, not by the national government.

The lower house is called the National Council of Switzerland, each canton is a constituency, but larger constituencies have more representatives, who are chosen according to a system of proportional representation. Women make up about one quarter of both the upper and lower houses.

The executive is headed by the Federal Council (a cabinet) which is elected by parliament, although virtually anyone can be elected. It is one of the most stable political bodies in the world, from 1959 until 2003 there was no change in the relative number of seats allocated to each party.

The President and Vice President fulfill largely ceremonial roles and are elected for one year terms. The current President is politician and lawyer Moritz Leuenberger.

The main political parties are the Swiss People's Party, the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland, and the Christian Democratic Party of Switzerland.

The rightist Swiss People's Party was traditionally the smallest party of the four, but doubled its share of the vote between 1987 and 1999 to become the largest single party.

This resulted in it increasing its share of seats on the Federal Council, by taking one seat from the Christian Democrats in 2003. By the standards of the Swiss Federal Council this was a political earthquake.

In 2003 the Swiss People's Party ran a highly controversial campaign which portrayed illegal immigrants as drug dealers and criminals.

The party's leader, Christoph Blocher, has been compared by his opponents to Austria's Joerg Haider and France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, both of whom are widely considered to be out and out racists, but it is evident from the poll results that the 2003 campaign met with approval with more Swiss than it offended.

Mr Blocher, a billionaire industrialist, strongly objects to accusations of racism or xenophobia.

The next largest party is the Green Party which took 7.4% of the vote in 2003, and improvement of 2.4% on the last election. Behind them is a host of small parties with less than five seats each.

Switzerland's neutrality in international affairs is renowned. It dates back to 1815 and the Vienna Conference, at which European States discussed post-Napoleonic relations. Historically, the primary reason for Switzerland's neutrality was to avoid involvement in Europe's frequent, bloody and destructive wars.

Switzerland was neutral in both World Wars, refuses to join the EU, long resisted joining the UN, and only recently started allowing its soldiers to carry weapons during peacekeeping missions abroad.

Questions about the policy of neutrality are constant both inside and outside of Switzerland. Some suggest that though fulfilling the criteria for neutrality under international law, Switzerland did not adhere to the underlying notions of neutrality because it exported arms to Nazi Germany and was the depository for gold looted from Holocaust victims.

Perhaps it is worth bearing in mind the opinion of Winston Churchill:
"She has been the sole international force linking the hideously-sundered nations and ourselves. What does it matter whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans, to keep herself alive? She has been a democratic State, standing for freedom in self defence among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side."

There are those who believe that EU integration has moved so far that there will be no more wars within Europe, and hence that the policy of neutrality is outdated.

Within Switzerland some feel that non-integration with the EEA is hurting the economy, but integration would, among other things, take power away from the regional canton governments, and end a tradition that has seen Switzerland through some of the most destructive centuries of European history relatively unscathed.

The question is a complicated one, but it seems unlikely to go away.

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