By Gregory A.
Fossedal, Chairman, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
Foreward by Alfred R. Berkeley III, vice-chair,
NASDAQ
"More than half its [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." Pg X
Pilgrimage
“Swiss consume more newspapers per capita than the people of
any other country—twice the European average.” Pg. 3
“It is perhaps the richest country in the world in terms of
per capita income, which is about $40,000 per year. [Yet] The Swiss economy is
one of those—Taiwan, Japan—which seem blessed by a poverty of physical
resources.” Pg. 5
“It contains communities in which popular government dates
farther back than anywhere else in the world.” – “Modern Democracies” by James
Bryce
1291
The 8/1/1291 Bundesbrief, the first Swiss pact for
“everlasting cooperation” of 3 cantons, is unsigned. “In some ways, this
anonymous character is appropriately Swiss, the product of a politics of
consensus by a group of equal citizens.” Pg. 16
Geodeterminism
“The Swiss constitution of 1848 was largely based on the
U.S. constitution of 1789.” Pg. 29
“Metternich seethed at the Swiss democracy. He loathed its
toleration of intellectuals and dissidents—loathed it, and feared it.” Pg 37
“There were probably more Swiss killed in the American Civil
War than in their own.” Pg 38
Constitution
“Legislation must pass both houses of parliament 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 thought
initiative and referendum.” Pg. 48
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…” Pg 53
“At the height of the Depression, while Franklin Roosevelt
was speaking of a nation “one third” in economic distress, the Swiss suffered a
maximum unemployment rate of 4.2 percent.”
Pg 58
“The first thought of a Swiss,” as President Furgler
commented, “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?’” Pg. 59
“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…” Pg
61
“Switzerland has no great bureaucracy to buck and kick
against the policies desired by the government.” Pg 63
“The combination [direct and representative government] has
the additional benefit of rendering the Swiss relatively difficult to sway with
sudden arguments, demagogic appeals, and slanted versions of the
facts…’Switzerland,’ as Lenin grumbled after living in the country for many
years, ‘is the worst ground for the revolution.” Pg 64
“The Swiss probably have sacked more castles in their
country, and tolerated fewer lords, than any other country of Europe. Where men
and women are citizens there cannot be lords and tyrants.” Pg 66
Judiciary
“This air of informality in the halls of government is all
the more striking in Switzerland because of the greater formality of the Swiss
in general compared to Americans…” Pg 69
“Some of the persons nominated to the court, in fact, are
not even attorneys but members of parliament, businessmen, and other
professionals.” Pg. 70
“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…” Pg 73
“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.” Pg. 74
Parliament
“Although most members have some competence in two ro 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 [government’s] three
official tongues.” Pg 76
“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.” Pg 76
“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
government offices housed at the Bundeshaus.”
Pg 79
“Senator Pat Moynihan onced described the error of many
Americans in thinking its legislators worked by the “consent of the governed.”
In fact, as Moynihan aptly noted, they operate as they wish unless the people
object. The same theme is woven thought the memoirs of the late Tip O’Neill.”
Pg 80
“In the U.S., even a junior member of Congress typically
enjoys staff, office, and other privileges in the amount of $800,000 and up.”
Pg 82
“The citizen system has also probably played a role in the
facility with which women have been able to move so quickly into the political
structure in Switzerland. (Their presence is all the more remarkable if we
recall that women did not even win the vote until a 1971 referendum.) [The
Swiss version of the Equal Rights Amendment passed 60-40% in 1981; it failed in
the US.]…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.” Pg 83
“There is almost no lobbying,” Bryce wrote, and this remains
largely true today. Pg 84
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.” Pg. 87
“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.” Pg. 88
“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 government—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.” Pg 90
“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.” Pg 91
“Table 9.1 lists some of the more important uses of the
referendum:”
[includes: 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 powerk the people have periodically denied it to
themselves—if, again, the matter is one they deem best handled by their
politicians.” Pg 100
“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.” Pg 101
“Direct democracy is the greatest single cause of these
economic policies that have helped Switzerland grow so rapidly over the last
century.” Pg 104
“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 he U.S.” Pg 105
“Thus the process of establishing a national bank became a
forty-year dialogue, and the value-added tax, one of almost 25 years.” Pg 105
“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.” Pg
106
“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, thought 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 consistently rejected the proposals—and by
large margins. Anti-immigration measures failed in the 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s.”
“In the U.S., since there is no national initiative or
referendum and since there are two dominant parties, it is much easier to
bottle up issues or proposals for years.”
“Because of many stages and iterations in Switzerland, the
referendum process is not one shot—it’s more deliberative and seriatim.”
“[Such problems plus] the sheer expense of collecting
signatures… and the large amounts of money spent on demagogic appeals—which the
voters, being less trained as legislators than the Swiss, are more susceptible
to—has rendered the process more like what the American founders feared for
direct democracy, than it is like the Swiss alternative.” Pg 108
“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… Imagine if all the effort and money spent in Washington went
towards educating people—and listening to them.” Pg 109
“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.” Pg 110
“The difference between it [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.” Pg 113
“Having asked dozens of Swiss what the worst result initiative
or referendum has produced, most of them answered ‘none.’” Pg 115
“In most countries, as the former economic an political guru
to Jack Kemp, Jude Wanniski, has observed, the voters as a whole are smarter
than their leaders. The difference may be that, in Switzerland, most leaders
believe the people are smarter.”
Pg 115
“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.” Pg 116
Communities
“It is simple. Citizenship is conferred by citizens.”
[Citizenship is granted to immigrants by vote of the local town councils.] Pg
119
“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.” Pg 126
Education
“People are perhaps more satisfied with the schools than in
any country in the world—Sweden, Australia, and Germany, in my experience would
offer significant comparison; the U.S., Canada, and Britain would not.” Pg 136
“When men cannot argue about principles, they will argue
about interests, and then, personal morals.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville Pg 142
“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.” Pg. 142
“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.” Pg 143
Taxes
“Swiss income tax rates are among the lowest in the
industrial world.” Pg 145
“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” Pg 148
“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.” Pg 150
“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.” Pg 151
“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.” Pg 153
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.” Pg 155
“nearly every Swiss male between 20 and 50 years old has his
rifle ready at home and practices regularly.”
Pg 155
Welfare
“Surveys, however, suggest that about 5.6% of the population
had an inadequate income to meet basic physical and health standards.” Pg 172
“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.” Pg 173
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.)” Pg 181
“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.” Pg 185
“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.”…”by contrast, an economic treaty with much narrower
ramifications for America’s vast economy—the 1993 trade pact with Mexico [and
Canada –NAFTA]—was debated largely in class or special-interest terms.” Pg 188
“Swiss public TV and radio enjoy an audience share of
roughly 50%--a figure unheard of undeveloped countries.” Pg 190
Family
“my memory of interviews with more than 500 Swiss brings to
mind only a few divorced men or women.” [Table shows 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…” Pg 195
[Adolescent pregnancy rate is 21.1 per 1000 in Switzerland,
83.6% in the U.S.]
“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 countcil in 1998, will have two
more terms by women presidents by 2010, under the country’s rotating presidency.”
Pg 202
Army
“Nearly every male voter is also a 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.” Pg 208
“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.”
Pg 211
Switzerland Accused
Bar [head of an old investment bank in Zurich]: “I feel very
proud and very ashamed of my country. I am a Swiss, and a Jew…Switzerland made
mistakes—was guilty of horrible political stupidity after the war. There should
have been n active effort to recompense the owners and the descendants of the
dormant accounts…At the same time, Switzerland resisted the Nazis for years
when she was completely surrounded.”
Indeed, even before the war, Switzerland was the first country to launch
a significant armament program to defend against the Nazi threat. Pg 213
Bar’s natural conflictedness was well captured when his
preparatory school in the U.S., the Horace Mann School, asked him to accept an
award in 1998. Bar was flattered. He would have liked to receive the honor.
“But I could not accept an award in the U.S., while my country was being
treated as it was by the U.S. government and in the U.S. press [in the late 1990s]…
I told them, as a Swiss, I could not accept.” Pg 214
“Deutsche Bank, Ford Motor Company, Allianz, and GM all
benefited from unsavory relations with the Nazi regime before or after the war.
“New York State,” as Bar points out, “was the beneficiary of most of the
Holocaust funds transferred to the U.S. under your escheatment laws—and never
returned a penny.” Pg 215
“As a neutral nation, Switzerland naturally kept up some
economic and political relations with her largest trading partner [Germany]. A
secret British report lat in the war concluded that Swiss neutrality had been
highly beneficial to the allies, as did such American officials as William
Clayton, Dean Acheson, and John Foster Dulles.” Pg 216
“The Swiss encirclement [by Axis-controlled countries] was
exacerbated by the American economic embargo of the Axis powers, which was a de
facto quarantine on all of Western Europe. In December, 1941, Washington froze
Swiss assets in the U.S., including substantial gold reserves. The ironic
result was to drive Switzerland, needing gold reserves to conduct trade and
defend its currency, into the arms of Germany…”
“The Swiss are just he people,” as the NY Times observed,
“if pushed a mite too far, who would prefer to starve or die fighting rather
than give in. Because they are that kind of people, they may not have to prove
it in action.” Pg 225
“He [Hitler] immediately ordered his generals to draw up
fresh invasion plans and described Bern—accurately- as the “center of international spying against
Germany.” Pg 225
“It was no accident that Hitler linked the Jews with the
Swiss in many of his eruptions. Although many Jewish refugees were turned away
at the Swiss border, thousands, particularly children and families with
children, were accepted. (More by far than were welcomed by any other country
in per capita terms.)” Pg 226
Churchill: “I put this down for the record. Of all the
neutrals, Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. She has been the
sole international force linking the hideously surrendered 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?” Pg 226
Diversity
“In Switzerland, minorities are not tolerated. They are
favored” –A. Togni Pg 233
“One people, composed of several races speaking several
languages; with several religious beliefs, various dissident sects, two
churches both equally established and privileged; all religious questions
turning into political ones, and all political questions turning quickly into
religious ones—in short, two societies, one very old and the other very young,
joined in marriage in spite of the age difference. That is a fair sketch of Switzerland.” -Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
“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.” Pg 233
“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.” Pg 233
“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.” Pg 234
“In almost any settings where government documents are on
display, one will see four or five stacks of everything—always German and
French, and frequently in Italian, English, or Romansch.” Pg 234
“There’s a sufficient diversity of different societal
groupings (race, language, religion) and of different levels of government and
other institutions so that most Swiss are in some important minority and some
majority groups…” Pg 236
“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.” Pg 237
“The Swiss have escaped both tyranny of the majority and
tyranny of the minority.”
“In his study of America, Tocqueville was impressed by the
effect that juries had as a kind of “training ground” for citizenship. Yet jury
service is a rare event for Americans, something most of us will experience
once or twice, for a few days. The Swiss army, as we have seen, permeates
social, business and political relationships in a popular way.” Pg 244
“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.” Pg 246
“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.” Pg 247
“Ironically, perhaps—since they already have to deal with
four official languages—the Swiss leaped past much of Europe in becoming a
nation skilled in English…” Pg 247
The End of History and 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 Pg 251
“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.” Pg 252
“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.” Pg 254
“Who commits acts of sovereignty,” as Tocqueville noted in
analyzing the Swiss poltical scene in a report to the French parliament, “is
sovereign.” Pg 255
“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.” Pg 255
“The maxim of indirect or representative democracy is,
“Write your congressman.” The maxim of direct or populist democracy is “vote
yes (or no).” Pg 256
“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.” Pg 257
“A hundred years ago fewer than 2% of Americans aged between
18 and 24 went to university; now more than a quarter do.”
“…as any student of history knows, it is inertia and
conventional wisdom that form the most powerful cabal.”
“It is hard to picture [either of the two] major parties
making a major issue of direct democracy. But the latent interest in political
reform among the American people is so strong that it would only take one
leader.”
“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.] Pg 265
“Did not Japan leap into the industrial age most decisively
in the mid-twentieth century, when alone among the Asian despotisms it adopted
a significant degree of democracy?” Pg 266
“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.” Pg 267
“Empires such as the Swiss,” as the advisory to King Louis
once put it with unintended irony, “extend their empire by the bad example of
their liberty.”
“In this world, it may well be, as Victor Hugo cryptically
insisted: “Switzerland will have the last word in history.” Pg 268
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