INTERNATIONAL
INSTITUTE FOR ORGANIZATION RESEARCH
http://www.anarchy.no/iifor.html - IIFOR P.B.
4777 Sofienberg N- 0506 Oslo - Norway
Federalism and Direct Democracy
- the Swiss Confederation
by IIFOR - ISSN 0800-0220
http://www.anarchy.no/swiss1.html
Federalism including direct democracy has historically been a corner stone both of Swiss political organization and culture and anarchism. The Swiss Confederation is internationally recognized as having a rich and sustainable experience, and highly differentiated public decision making and conflict management in multicultural environments. Federalism cannot remain static, nor be considered a panacea. It must evolve and adapt to rapid technological, economic and societal change. The lessons are clear, that not only there is an extensive movement of decentralization of public sector underway, but also for many countries radical public sector change and decentralization are central in achieving broader revolutionary objectives of efficient resource mobilization, building a foundation for a pluralistic and real democratic society, and the establishment of a well functioning economy.
Although the Constitution of the Swiss Confederation is not ideal anarchist, it is a.o.t referring to the "God Almighty" in the preamble, where a secular or atheist formulation would be better from anarchist point of view, it must be considered relatively libertarian, especially with respect to the organizing of the public sector. The terms "state", "government", "powers" and "authority" are used, but mainly meaning "confederal public sector" and similar -- or different parts of it, and not "state", "government", "powers" and "authority" defined in the anarchist way, in short meaning "organization from the top downwards". The "Nationalrat" (National council), "Ständerat" (Council of States) and "Bundesrat" (Federal Council), i.e. political councils of the Swiss system, are somewhat misleading translated to words used in the American system in the English version of the Constitution, as they have different functions, say, the influence of the Swiss councils are limited by direct democracy. This is not happening in America, so the Swiss system seen all in all is more working from the bottom upwards.
Thus, an approximation to the best and most libertarian of the Swiss public sector structure and function, and the Swiss Constitution, would represent a clear improvement in anarchist direction for most countries. The Swiss Confederation's federalism including the direct democracy is an important practical example of a part of anarchism, i.e. mainly a good approximation to the anarchist principles of decentralisation, federalism and autogestion. There is something very important to learn from the Swiss Confederation's public sector organization with respect to practical anarchism. In Switzerland it is possible to insist, by collecting a modest number of signatures, that any law proposed by the councils must be submitted to a vote of the whole people. Even better, you can also insist (by getting more signatures) that a brand-new idea for a law must be put to the people even if the councils are against the idea. Also other countries have federalism and direct democracy on the agenda, but they are not as libertarian and well developed as the public sector organization of the Swiss Confederation. Thus we will take a closer look at it:
Characteristics of Swiss federalism:
1. Four linguistic and cultural groups in Switzerland; majorities
and minorities
2. Direct democracy
3. Solidarity
4. Confederal Constitution: 26 sovereign cantons; "supposition
towards cantons"
A brief guide to the Swiss public sector system and the federal constitution of the Swiss
Confederation are presented at the following link (click on) :
http://www.admin.ch/
More than half the Swiss Constitution's provisions, as of the late twentieth century, were derived from popular ballot initiatives or referenda voted on directly by the people. It is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income. Yet the Swiss economy is one of those which seem blessed by a poverty of physical resources.
In Switzerland the people in referanda do vote
about tax increases/decreases, tax system, prisons, nuclear
powerplants, rail-systems, foreign-politics, international
treaties, the finances of the villages, cantons, country,
salary of the members of parliament, protection of the landscape.
The Initiative is very popular in switzerland and quite often,
when the people have to vote about a more popular theme, the
turnouts are very high (40%-50% and sometimes up to ca 70%).
The referenda have often been used to block some unwanted public
sector activities and some international treaties, of which
people had to fear major disadvantages. Switzerland
doesn't have a real and powerful president, like the USA. There
are several ministers, elected by parliament who form the Federal
Concil (Bundesrat). Every year another one of these is
called 'First among equals', thus he/she is called president. Every
"Kanton" has its own laws, its own constitution,
its own court. The Confederation and all of the cantons have
the possibility of public interaction into the political
process:
- Initiative: The Possibility to propose a
change in constitution, or even to propose a new
constitution at all. 100,000 signatures are requred to
place an initiative on the ballot. It is impossible yet, to
directly change the laws, but since the constitution
overrides law, the affected laws just get invalid, but not
deleted.
- Obligatorisches Referendum: The federal constitution demands, if some specified laws are proposed by the parliament to change, there has to be a vote about it.
- Fakultatives Referendum:
If any other law changes, which doesn't underly any of the restrictions
above, there is only one chance to get a vote about it: From
the day on, a law has been accepted by parliament, any
movement of people in Switzerland has three months time to
collect 50 000 approved signs of swiss citizens, to enforce
a vote about it, otherwise
it gets valid three months after proposal.
- Petition: A non-binding
proposal/question to the public sector.
In addition to the referenda one major difference between the US
and the Swiss system is as mentioned: The Swiss Confederation doesn't
have a powerful president, there are several ministers, working
together in the Federal Council. Another major difference is: The
Swiss aren't used to have a single party ruling. All the main parties are represented in the Federal Council according to a formula. This Formula is called the "Zauberformel"
(magic formula). Therefore the Federal Council is not
only representing about 51% of all voting people, but even
around 90% of the people. The acceptance of the "Bundesrat", the
Federal Council of the ministers, is quite high, with one
exception. The one exception is everything concerning the
European Union.
Constitution
Legislation must pass both parliamentary councils to
become law, but it needs no further signature from the executive.
This check, the “veto,” was thought to be unnecessary:
it is carried out by the people through initiative and referendum.
Executives Branch
The Swiss Press is more vigorous than the press in America or
Britain with respect to discussing policy issues, but far less
interested in reporting on political conflict and personal
scandal. The first thought of a Swiss is not, ‘let us
go to the federal government for this,’ but rather, ‘let’s
bring it up at the town council’. And even when you are at
the national level it is not, ‘what can the president do
about it?’ but rather, ‘what do we need to do about it?’.
Military efficiency too requires someone to make the decisions.
The Swiss, always suspicious of concentrations of power, prefer
not to have such a commanding figure during peacetime. Hence
there is no general-in-chief, indeed normally no Swiss general,
except in time of war.
Switzerland has no great bureaucracy to buck and kick against the
policies desired by the public sector. The combination
direct and delegated public sector managemt has the
additional benefit of rendering the Swiss relatively difficult to
sway with sudden arguments, demagogic appeals, and slanted
versions of the facts.
Judiciary
Some of the persons nominated to the court, in fact, are not even
attorneys but members of parliament, businessmen, and other
professionals.Switzerland has a number of provisions that
discourage professionals from thinking of legal practice as a way
to amass great wealth or fame. There is a loser-pays provision
for lawsuits. To understand why the federal courts have almost no
authority to void federal law and only limited authority to void
cantonal statutes, it is helpful to remember who may: the people.
In the U.S., there is much debate among legal scholars about what
the “original intent of the framers” was.In
Switzerland, to a much greater extent, the “framers”
are still alive and they are not a particular group of men, but
all the citizens. There is no need to perform highly speculative
debates about what they meant; and if an error is made, it is
easily corrected by those same authors themselves.
The National Council and the Council of State (Parliament)
Although most members have some competence in two or more of the
country’s four official languages, some do not, and by law,
individuals at such proceedings have a right to speak in any of
the confederations three official tongues.
It reflects, more than any other parliament, the people who elect
is, and it enacts — especially given the many popular checks
on it — laws that are closer to the heart and spirit of its
people than in any other nation. The Swiss feel perhaps less
alienated from their politicians than the voters of any other
country. There are no federal term limits and members enjoy a
very high rate of reelection. Yet they generally step down after
a period of ten or so years. In many Western countries, the
pattern is the opposite: Many politicians loudly proclaim the
virtues of limited terms, yet decline to step down themselves
after years in office.
Members of parliament come and go, leaving an outsider to wonder
where the entrance is for “visitors” or the “general
public. One passes through a long, old-fashioned-type communal
press room with big wooden tables and ample seating, but no
special desks belonging to individual reporters. The typical
parliamentarian has only a shared desk in this outer commons
area, or a best, a cubbyhole at his party’s office nearby.
There are no paid staff, no special barbershops for members.
Members generally eat in a cafeteria along with other members,
visitors, and employees from the library and other public sector
offices housed at the Bundeshaus.
The Swiss parliament consists of citizens who live not with
separate members’ pension and health plans, special
entrances and parking places and other perks, but will in fact be
back at their workplace living under the laws they have created
within a few weeks. There is almost no lobbying, and this
remains largely true today.
Referendum
In the plebiscites in Revolutionary France, votes often resembled
those 98-1 or better affairs. Taken in the spur of the moment,
with little real debate or presentation of alternatives, these
plebiscites revealed scarcely any of the deliberate sense of the
people. They had all the seriousness and thoughtfulness of an
opinion poll taken over the telephone, and gave to ‘plebiscitory
democracy” the bad name it still has for many today. Because
of this advantage in holding discussions seriatim, separated by
an interval of weeks or months, the referendum is more amenable
to a deliberative process. Popular assemblies, by contrast, must
be carefully managed to avoid becoming a chaotic shouting match.
Although there had been little experience with the device
referendum per se on a cantonal level, there was a consensus
among the men writing the constitution in 1847 and 1848 that the
referendum would prove a highly useful device for legitimizing
their new structure of public sector — and therefore,
warranted to be retained as a permanent part of the design.
Evidently, the people had little objection to being consulted
about he constitution initially, or about its provision by which
they would be consulted periodically.
Finally in 1891, the right of initiative for changes to the
federal constitution was approved by 60 % of the voters and 18 of
the 22 (full) cantons. As a check against caprice, the
constitutional referendum has always required approval by both
the majority of the voters and a majority of the cantons.
Looking at this 150-year history, the most important
characteristic is probably something one does not see. There does
not appear to have been a single crise de regime caused by the
initiative or referendum policy.
A list of some of the more important uses of the
referendum:
Add initiative to referendum power, 1891; Proportional voting for
parliament, 1918; Add Romansch to German, French and Italian as a
national language, 1938; Voting rights for women, 1971; Equal
rights for women, 1981; Consumer protection against corporate
cartels, 1982; New constitution, 1999; repeated rejection of
immigration restrictions, 1977, 2000; Join UN, 2002.
The referendum power is even, in a sense, self-denying. Far from
grasping for power the people have periodically denied it to
themselves — if, again, the matter is one they deem best
handled by their politicians.
All the articles about immigration policy in the Swiss press,
while they have not enabled anti-immigration measures to pass,
have provided information that the proponents are eager to see
disseminated. The education process works in both directions, too.
Often the movements that propound radical ideas are able to
refine or moderate their positions and become more effective.
Politicians who misread the popular mood, meanwhile, can go back
to their office and rethink their approach.
Direct democracy is the greatest single cause of
these economic policies that have helped Switzerland grow so
rapidly over the last century.
Over the last 150 years, the Swiss have been less troubled by the
wild swings of inflation and deflation seen in the world at large
than almost any other country — even including the U.S.
Thus the process of establishing a national bank became a forty-year
dialogue, and the value-added tax, one of almost 25 years.
A system of referendum does not yield the same results one would
have if one polled the people about the issues on the referenda
— because when someone knows he is going to be asked to
render an opinion, and that opinion will become law, he treats
the matter more seriously. Members of a jury treat a case
differently than members of the general public; and by the same
token, voters and lawmakers regard it otherwise than if they were
mere bystanders.
Like the U.S., Switzerland plays home to a large number of
foreign-born workers and their families — close to 20% of
the population for the Swiss. Public opinion polls, though taken
much less seriously in Switzerland, indicate that by margins of
about 3 to 1 the Swiss feel there are too many foreigners, they
cannot be assimilated, and something should be done about it. Yet
when confronted with the chance to reduce immigration through
policy, Swiss voters have mainly consistently rejected the
proposals — and by large margins. Anti-immigration measures
failed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
The Swiss are direct democracy professionals, working out
regularly. The typical Swiss citizen votes on a constitutional
amendment about once a year, and votes several times on cantonal
laws, initiatives, and amendments. Most groups have suffered
enough defeats, but also won enough victories so that the “losers”
don’t comprise a consistent or solid ideological bloc.
Business interests, for example, have lost many votes on
environmental policy, but have won others on taxes. The left has
been unable to push certain pending schemes, but has enjoyed
victories on pension and health care policies.The difference
between the Swiss system and purely representative democracy
is illustrated if we imagine a system in which you could pick
only which grocery store someone else would shop at for you
— or, still further, if you could select between 3 or 4 [2,
usually!] carts that had been previously filled by people at the
store, but could not stock the carts yourself.
As a result, there is perhaps less of a gap between elite and
popular opinion in Switzerland than in any other country. There
is, when such gaps occur, less arrogance felt by the elites and
less frustration by the people than perhaps mankind has ever seen
over an extended time under any other political system. The chief
institutional sources of the distinctive level of mutual respect,
in my observation, is the federal and cantonal initiative and
referendum process, and community democracy.
Communities
It is simple. Citizenship is conferred by citizens. Citizenship
is granted to immigrants by vote of the local town councils. The
discussions, the meetings — they all end, politically and
therefore psychologically, at the people. Consensus building
among elites, in this sense, is merely a faster way of bowing to
the inevitable.
Education
People are perhaps more satisfied with the schools than in any
country in the world. "When men cannot argue about
principles, they will argue about interests, and then, personal
morals," Alexis de Tocqueville. Over time, of course,
the most important impact of this process, ballot initiatives
regarding education -- may, ironically, be pedagogic. By
constantly empowering even the smallest voices to set off a
legislative debate and making frequent to the jury of the people,
the Swiss education system, in combination with the political,
leads a constant dialogue. And, unlike an abstract, academic
discussion where nothing changes as a result, this is, if one may
co-opt a 1970s phrase, a “meaningful dialogue.”
In Switzerland, the majority, as scholar Carol Schmidt
puts it, often “does not behave like a majority.” That
is to say, there are majorities in Switzerland —
Protestants, German-speakers, and others — that abstain from
establishing certain practices they might otherwise prefer, out
of a deliberate respect for the minority.
Taxes
Swiss income tax rates are relatively among the lowest in the
industrial world. Wage income, capital gains and corporate
income are all taxed — none at more than 40%, few at less
than 10%. This attribute has been called “longitudinal
fairness”. The voters have the same power, indeed
greater power, to limit taxes at the cantonal and local levels
— yet they have proven more willing to approve new and
higher taxes at those levels than the voters in perhaps any other
country in the world. As a review of the initiative and
referendum process suggest, it is more difficult to raise taxes
in Switzerland than in perhaps any other country. Yet, taxes are
raised and altered from time to time. And when they are, there is
less resentment than elsewhere, because the burdens are self-imposed.
Income taxes are paid to the community, which reports and divides
income with the canton; the canton in turn reports and directs
income to the federal government.
Crime
Swiss crime rates are not the lowest in the world, but they are
close. Switzerland enjoys high employment that has exceeded
98 % for most of the century. Nearly every Swiss male between 20
and 50 years old has his rifle ready at home and practices
regularly. Welfare
Surveys, however, suggest that about 5.6% of the population had
an inadequate income to meet basic physical and health standards. Little
of this poverty, while real in a sense, is hard core. That is to
say, few of the people who may be poor one year in Switzerland
are poor two or three years later. The shape of poverty in
regional, ethnic, and other terms is happily even. For instance,
of all the statistically poor, about 74% are of Swiss birth, and
2% are foreign born — roughly their proportion in the work
force as a whole. Press
The typical Swiss surely casts more votes every year than the
citizen of any other country. And the people read more newspapers
per capita than in any other country in the world. (With a
respectful nod to Norway, first by some measures.)
Swiss newspapers make more than 95% of their sales to subscribers.
This is a much higher proportion than one sees in most of Europe
or in comparable parts of the U.S.— namely, large cities.
There is less pressure to sell a paper every day by having the
most glaring photograph or headline, under this system.
But most people are for or against joining]the EU because they
think it will be good or bad for the country, not because tit
will be good or bad for them.
Swiss public TV and radio enjoy an audience share of roughly 50%
-- a figure unheard of undeveloped countries.
Family
Relatively few divorced men or women, say, 29 /per
100 marriages in Switzerland, 48 in the U.S./
In conversations about women, Swiss men are less coarse than is
the Western norm, and far less coarse than the American norm.
There is less of an obsession with sex in normal conversation.
Adolescent pregnancy rate is only 21.1 per 1000 in Switzerland.
Indeed, the Swiss have a higher percentage of women in their
parliament, more than 20% of the combined chambers, than the U.S.
or most European countries. Switzerland has now had one woman
president, and following the election of another woman to the
federal council in 1998, will have two more terms by women
presidents by 2010, under the country’s rotating presidency.
Army
Nearly every male voter is also a militia/military man —
and, with a full-time military establishment of only about 1,000
officials or less, nearly every military man earns his living in
the civilian economy. No doubt this is one reason there have been
relatively few of the military scandals in Switzerland, either as
to over-priced procurement items, what weapons to purchase, or
other matters.
Neutrality, thus, is a state of mind and personal philosophy, a
broadened version of that very wise beginning of the doctor’s
Hippocratic Oath: "First do no harm."
Diversity
"In Switzerland, minorities are not tolerated. They are
favored” – A. Togni. Those national cultures along
the Swiss border — in many cases less separated by natural
boundaries from their affinity group than the three major Swiss
language populations are from one another — have been an
entropic magnet, always urging the country apart. Ethnic
Italians, Germans, French, Jews, and Arabs — groups that
haven’t been able to get along anywhere else for centuries
—swirl together within a work force more than one-fifth
foreign born. Scholars and historians comparing Switzerland
to such multilingual nations as Belgium, Canada, India, Nigeria,
and South Africa are intrigued at the degree to which the Swiss
have managed to form a bona fide nation. In almost any settings
where public sector documents are on display, one will see four
or five stacks of everything — always German and French, and
frequently in Italian, English, or Romansch. Most Swiss are
in some important minority and some majority groups. Once
again, the unusual degree of harmony between people and elites in
Switzerland, the mutual respect unusual even in democratic
societies, makes it very difficult to say who is leading whom. The
Swiss have escaped both tyranny of the majority and tyranny of
the minority.
The Swiss army permeates social, business
and political relationships in a popular way. When asked an
open-ended question about their reasons for being proud to be
Swiss, most named some element of their political system, such as
direct democracy.
The Swiss facility with different languages has made them a
natural power in the emerging world of global business. This is
seen by the country’s highly disproportionate share of Nobel
science prizes and international patents.
The Next Citizen
“The people can never willfully betray their own interests;
but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the
people” – The Federalist, No. 63
Interestingly, thought, the reasons raised against direct
democracy nearly all could be used, and in earlier times were
used, to argue against the American Revolution; to argue it cold
not be extended elsewhere, to deny the vote to blacks, women, and
other groups deemed insufficiently educated, or otherwise “not
ready” as a cultural or traditional matter for democracy.
In focus groups and surveys, people express a rage at the system’s
immobility, feelings that democracy (in America and Europe) is
unresponsive to their concerns and frustrations. In
Switzerland, by contrast, people asked an open-ended question
about what makes them proud about their country were more likely
to give an answer having to do with their political system than
were the next several answers combined.
“Who commits acts of sovereignty,” as Tocqueville noted
in analyzing the Swiss poltical scene in a report to the French
parliament, “is sovereign.”
In effect, for this highly decentralized country, initiative and
referendum may have been a key legitimizing device which made
action by the central and even to some extent the cantonal
governments a palatable thing — as any future encroachments
could be checked by the people. The maxim of indirect or
representative democracy is, “Write your congressman.”
The maxim of direct democracy is “vote yes (or no).”
Second, direct democracy sharpens the ordinary sense of political
responsibility. When one has to make up his own mind on a wide
variety of specific issues — the Swiss tackled 66 federal
questions by general vote in the 1980s, hundreds of cantonal ones
and an unknown number (nobody added them up) of local-community
matters — he learns to take politics seriously.
Hitler and Stalin, Pinochet and Marcos — all held
plebiscites when it suited them. The test of a new application of
direct democracy will be its automaticity, the extent to which it
takes place not at the caprice of leaders, but of the people.
This is the purpose of the citizen initiative, sometimes
categorized with plebiscites generically as referenda. Swiss
have a greater incentive to follow political issues and to think
seriously about them — they may well be voting on them in a
few months.
Swiss politicians, journalists, and business leaders all, in
turn, adjust their behavior accordingly. More focus is placed on
informing, and listening to, the people, than in any other
democracy.
The Swiss Confederation is a Real Democracy, an anarchy of low degree, see IJA 1 (37) . However the Swiss Confederation was slow with women's right to vote, and recently has decided by referendum to ban building of new minarets, a decision condemned by the Anarchist International and the International Anarchist Tribunal, as against libertarian human rights. To secure and increase the anarchist degree in Switzerland, stronger public tribunals, more law and order, based on Libertarian Human Rights should be introduced. Also more direct actions aiming at higher degree of anarchy, and against reactionary tendencies, should be introduced in this context. More information and news about the Swiss Confederation, see the Anarchy-debate.
(Sources: AIT-AIIS and "Direct Democracy in Switzerland" by Gregory Fossedal, Chair, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution)
Resolution, decided with general consent, by:
The International Anarchist Congress
The 11th Anarchist Biennial 27-28.11.2010
International Congress-Seminar on Anarchism
The AI/IFA network represents more than 50 000 anarchist world wide
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