SGI 2024 | Switzerland | Key Challenges

Key Challenges

Recent Governments Experts

SGI experts on Switzerland

Klaus Armingeon

Klaus Armingeon is full professor for comparative and European politics and director at the Institute of Political Science in Bern (Switzerland). He has worked at several academic institutions, including the universities of Konstanz, Mannheim, Heidelberg (Germany), Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (United States) and Innsbruck (Austria). His main publications focus on welfare state policy, political economy, industrial relations, trade unions and political parties in comparative perspective, with a special emphasis on Switzerland. His recent publications include a chapter on fiscal and economics policies in the Handbook of Swiss Politics (2014), and articles on the fiscal responses to the great recession (Governance 2012), the loss of trust in the European Union (European Union Politics 2014), and the decline of support for national democracy in the recent recession (European Journal of Political Research 2014).

Fritz Sager

Fritz Sager, PhD, is a Professor of political science at the KPM Center for Public Management at the University of Bern. He is specialized in administrative studies and theory, policy research and evaluation, organizational analysis, and Swiss politics. Recent research focuses on topics as diverse as the history of administrative ideas and their transatlantic transfer in the 20th century; the politics of blame avoidance in Western democracies; the role of policy evaluations in the Swiss political system; the design, implementation and effects of smoking prevention programmes in the Swiss cantons; the locational policies of Secondary Capital Cities as well as small and medium-sized towns; as well as the acceptance of new policy instruments in spatial planning. His mos recent books are ‘Policy-Analyse in der Schweiz’ (NZZ Libro, 2017), ‘Evaluation im politischen System der Schweiz’ (NZZ Libro, 2017) and ‚The Political Economy of Capital Cities‘ (Routledge, 2017).

Céline Mavrot

Prof. Dr. Céline Mavrot is a tenure-track Assistant Professor on the Governance of Health Systems at the University of Lausanne. She has been a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University in 2021, as well as at the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2020. She is a political scientist specialized in public policy evaluation, comparative policy analysis, and multi-level governance. Her work focuses on democratic processes and health inequalities. She has conducted numerous consultancy and policy evaluation mandates for public agencies and non-governmental organisations on the designing and implementation of public policies. She is currently participating in the CROSS research project on industrial pollution and in the Undeterred Horizon-Europe research project on institutional discrimination in the sectors of health, housing, work, and education. Her work has been published in journals such as the American Review of Public Administration, the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, the Journal of European Public Policy, the European Journal of Political Research, Public Policy & Administration, or Climate Policy.

Reimut Zohlnhöfer (Coordinator)

Reimut Zohlnhöfer holds a chair of political science at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg (Germany), where he is also the head of the political science department. He holds an MA from the University of Heidelberg, a PhD from the University of Bremen and a Habilitation from the University of Heidelberg. Previously, he worked at the Center for Social Policy Research of the University of Bremen, at the Center of European Studies at Harvard University and at the University of Bamberg. His research focuses on economic and social policies in developed democracies.

Two key challenges for Switzerland’s democracy are obvious: the lack of ability to respond swiftly to external and internal changes, and the conflict between assertions of national sovereignty and the ability to benefit from international integration.

Over the past years, the political system’s inability to respond quickly and effectively to challenges has become a prominent concern. Three cases of delayed responses stand out: first, the stalemate in finding a response to the European Union’s demand for a solid institutional basis for bilateral relations; second, the failure to push through an encompassing CO2 reform in a referendum; and third, pension reforms that have showed a tendency to muddle through rather than enact deliberate grand strategies. As shown by various empirical studies, this disadvantage has been compensated for by the quality of the solutions found, especially in terms of efficiency and sustainability based on broad societal consensus and well thought-out policy designs. However, the more that socioeconomic processes accelerate – that is, the more that things are not only changing, but are also changing at an increasing rate – the greater the burden of slowness may become. Three institutional impediments to quick policy responses can be highlighted.

First, direct democracy has an inherent reform-averse tendency in the case of referendums if citizens vote on a bill accepted by parliament. Besides a “no” heuristic (i.e., rejecting something one is unsure of or knows very little about; see Kriesi 2005), opposition from various sides of the political spectrum can be relatively easily mobilized by interest groups and political parties. A case in point was the rejection of the CO2 law, which was defeated following the mobilization of homeowners, car drivers and rural-area citizens, among others. Direct democracy is highly valued by Swiss citizens and political parties. It is considered to be the core DNA of the country’s political system. Therefore, institutional reform that makes direct democracy compatible with swift solutions to problems is arguably politically infeasible.

Second, historically Swiss federalism differs from the “unitarian federalism” of neighboring Germany, as it gives cantons considerable and autonomous policymaking powers (including taxation) and allows for variations in living conditions. This “dual model” in which federation and cantons have clearly separate tasks for which they carry sole responsibility has been significantly modified over time. This has brought Swiss federalism ever closer to the German model, which is well-known for its tendency for policy gridlock. While some experts support further “interlocking” and hence mimicking of the German system, others support a return to the “dual model.” Arguably, the stronger the Germanification of Swiss federalism, the higher the likelihood of further slowing down a system that already suffers from slowness.

Third, Swiss corporatism has been effective, with social partners designing policies in their fields and efficiently sidelining parliament and party politics. This came, of course, at the price of transparency and the jurisdiction of institutions and actors of representative democracy. In recent decades, the parliament and federal administration have increasingly gained power in the policy process due to external changes. Interest organizations representing capital and labor have lost influence and resources, political pressure groups have been layered onto the old corporatist system, and new actors – such as citizen groups (e.g., the WWF) – have successfully gained access to the political system. However, they remain less influential than the traditional key players within the corporatist system in a strongly liberal and industrial state. In addition, the media has increasingly investigated previously opaque policy processes. Given the complexity of the Swiss political system and its vulnerability to gridlock, preserving or finding substitutes for the advantageous aspects of Swiss corporatism may be a major institutional challenge.

In addition to these institutional impediments to swift policy responses, another major challenge lies in squaring the circle of national sovereignty, and thereby taking full advantage of the cultural, economic and social benefits of international integration.

Switzerland’s share of foreign citizens within its resident population among the highest in the world. Immigration has stimulated economic growth. To sustain the high economic growth rate, it will be essential that the country continues to recruit labor from abroad. An extraordinarily high proportion of elite positions in the economy and within the higher education system are staffed by foreign-born workers. Foreign citizens are also on average younger than the average Swiss citizen. Consequently, they contribute far more to the Swiss pension system than they receive. Hence, they subsidize the Swiss pension system and contribute significantly to its sustainability. Nevertheless, immigration has prompted considerable concern among Swiss voters about house prices, jobs, the use of infrastructure (e.g., roads and public transportation) and national identity.

Today, the Swiss People’s Party is among the strongest right-wing populist parties in Europe in terms of popular vote share, representation in government and success in referendums. Notably, this political strength cannot be primarily attributed to xenophobia. At least in international comparison, Switzerland and some of the Nordic countries show a relatively low level of xenophobia. Even so, the Swiss People’s Party has been extremely successful in mobilizing xenophobic elements within the population, leading to breaches of fundamental rights of foreigners in individual cases (ban on minarets).

Likewise, for decades politicians have been eager to argue that international integration and the sovereignty of the democratic political system can be achieved at the same time. However, experience has shown that this is extraordinarily difficult. Switzerland has already lost much of its sovereignty, just as other European countries have both within and outside the EU. Since the political elite has emphasized the notion of Switzerland as a fully sovereign country and the large majority of the population is convinced of this narrative, any pragmatic European integration – even below the level of full EU membership – would be hard to sell to the public if, as it inevitably would, it included obvious constraints on Switzerland’s sovereignty.

This problem of reconciling national sovereignty with international integration is also reflected in the growing number of popular initiatives that have been approved by voters but only partially implemented or not implemented at all. Several recent constitutional changes that followed publicly approved initiatives remain only partially implemented because full implementation would violate international law, international treaties or economic norms. This has put the administration in a difficult position. Full implementation would violate international or economic norms, but partial implementation gives rise to accusations from right-wing politicians that the “will of the people” is not being respected.

To mitigate the conflict between “responsive” and “responsible” government, political elites must effectively communicate that the Swiss nation – like all modern consolidated democracies – is at best semi-sovereign, and that there are strict limitations on what the public can decide upon. Yet any such a communication strategy would clash with the self-image of the Swiss, who are immensely proud of their (perceived) independence and sovereignty.

On the other hand, a major advantage of Swiss democracy is its pragmatic approach. Hitherto, Swiss political and administrative elites have found ways and means to reconcile tensions between input legitimacy (voters’ decisions) and output legitimacy (policies framed as being in favor of the interests of the majority of the people). Policy implementation is a political process in which many extreme decisions are downsized and adapted to reality so they do not cause as much harm as feared. The public administration plays an important role in this cooling down of policy conflicts.

Citations:

Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2005. Direct Democratic Choice. Lanham: Lexington Books.