Don't forget extreme federalism, a key feature of the Swiss model
I would add at least one more key element of the Swiss model, which is that it is a federal system that pushes political authority for many policies to smaller political units than most countries, in part, in response to the fact that it is a multi-lingual country with differing mixes of languages between cantons (only 4 of 26 cantons have more than one official language).
The twenty-six Swiss cantons have populations and geographic areas comparable to U.S. county governments, which are among the smallest units in a federal state anywhere in the world. As noted at the link:
The areas of the cantons vary from 37 km2 (15 sq. mi.) (Basel-Stadt)
to 7,105 km2 (2743 sq. mi.) (Grisons); the populations (as of 2018)
range from 16,000 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) to 1.5 million (Zürich).
(via Wikipedia)
Yet, cantons have political power closer to U.S. states or Canadian provinces, than they do to U.S. local governments, and they each have local governments within them that also have significant political autonomy (Switzerland has 2,222 municipal governments, with an average of roughly 4,000 people each, with many municipal governments even within its largest urbanized areas). To achieve comparable levels of political decentralization, the U.S. would have to have about 3000 states.
The Swiss Federal Constitution declares the cantons to be sovereign to
the extent that their sovereignty is not limited by federal law. Areas
specifically reserved to the Confederation are the armed forces,
currency, the postal service, telecommunications, immigration into and
emigration from the country, granting asylum, conducting foreign
relations with sovereign states, civil and criminal law, weights and
measures, and customs duties.
Each canton has its own constitution, legislature, executive, police
and courts. Similar to the Confederation, a directorial system of
government is followed by the cantons.
The cantonal legislatures are unicameral parliaments, with their size
varying between 58 and 200 seats. . . .
So, even a canton with just 16,000 people has at least a 58 person legislature and also elected municipal officials and referenda providing additional means of democratic input. The only U.S. state with anything close to this many legislators per capita is New Hampshire.
The cantons retain all powers and competencies not delegated to the
Confederation by the federal constitution or law: most significantly
the cantons are responsible for healthcare, welfare, law enforcement,
public education, and retain the power of taxation. Each canton
defines its official language(s). Cantons may conclude treaties not
only with other cantons but also with foreign states (respectively
Articles 48 and 56 of the Federal Constitution).
The cantonal constitutions determine the internal organisation of the
canton, including the degree of autonomy accorded to the
municipalities, which varies but almost always includes the power to
levy taxes and pass municipal laws; some municipalities have their own
police forces.
As at the federal level, all cantons provide for some form of direct
democracy.
The vast majority of countries with its area and population have unitary national governments instead. Switzerland has the population of 8,670,300 (considerably less than Ohio, and with less land area, and less still habitable land area).
The involvement of all significant parties in the Federal Council, is possible, in part, because the central government is comparatively weak due to this strong federalism and due to the amount of political decision making that takes place through direct democracy.
The central government in Switzerland has power only comparable to what the central government in the U.S. did before the U.S. Civil War, which was not much. And it doesn't have a small national legislature either, with a lower house of 200 legislators and an upper house called a "Council of States" with 46 legislators (two each in the twenty historical full cantons and one each in the six historical half-cantons). The U.S. has roughly twice as many legislators as Swiss national parliament does, but more than 38 times as many people.
Indeed, given the large number of elected legislators at the local, canton, and federal level in Switzerland, it is something of a surprise that it needs direct democracy too. But it does have that in spades:
Different elements of the Swiss model have been replicated.
Italy, for many decades after World War II, had the same set of five centrist parties in the government (which constantly saw coalitions break down and then reform) with a very broad political range, in order to political isolate the far left and far right, producing a similar effect but with much less stability, and has more direct democracy than any European countries other than Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Bosnia, Iraq, and Lebanon all require that all major factions in their countries have representation in the top level decision making bodies.
The radical decentralization of Swiss cantons with an express model in Bosnia and a moderate influence of multiple post-Yugoslavian countries. Bosnia even calls its ten subdivisions cantons.
Many U.S. states make heavy use of direct democracy, even though the U.S. federal government does not, and the U.S. is also heavily decentralized although not quite as much as Switzerland. Many European countries have some direct democracy, largely as a result a result of the Swiss model, although not nearly as much as Switzerland and many U.S. states. A high level of direct democracy was also the norm historically in New England in town government.
The Swiss have one of the world's oldest democratic political cultures
A comment from NoDataDumpNoContribution notes:
More direct democracy is proposed quite often here and Switzerland is
also named as an model then, but then there is often the difference in
population named as one reason to not follow through. Maybe what works
with less than 10 million people doesn't anymore with more than 100
million? Also the history of Switzerland is quite unique with the
long-standing neutrality. Maybe Swiss people honed that way of
creating consensus for a long time and one cannot easily copy it?
This too has a lot of merit to it. Switzerland is one of the oldest republics, in the narrow sense of not having a hereditary monarchy, that still survives as an independent country in Europe, so it has had a much longer time to build its political culture. Key elements of its system have been in place since the 13th century, before any Europeans other than a few Vikings had set foot in the New World (and they didn't last), and only a little after the Norman Conquest of England and democratic experiments in Iceland.
The organization of its military, relying heavily on conscription, also builds national unity and consensus in a way that might not otherwise have been possible. This in turn was possible, in part, due to Swiss international neutrality, which in part, was made possible by an Alpine geography that was not hospitable to invaders given the military technologies in place for most of its history.
The strong role of conscripts in the military forcing public involvement is matched by the large number of people per thousand who serve in some canton or municipal office, in addition to federal legislators, creating a large pool of politically savvy and experienced citizens.
And, while it is linguistically diverse (German is the only official language in 17 cantons, French is the only official language in 4 cantons, French and German are the official language in 3 cantons, Italian is the only official language in one canton, and Italian, German, and Romansh are the official language in one trilingual canton, Grisons, with 200,000 people and a sixth of the country's land area), it does not have the kind of political/cultural diversity and division seen within Northern Ireland or Belgium or the United States or pre-2014 Ukraine or Italy or even unified Germany, let alone non-Western countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Rwanda, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines or Thailand. Diversity within individual cantons where power is concentrated in this confederation is even smaller.
Switzerland may have more political/cultural diversity than Finland or South Korea or Japan or the Netherlands or Iceland, but it still only has so much.
In order to replicate that system, it would mean that whoever is already in power (or aspires to be) would have to relinquish some of it.
– LordOfThePigs Mar 27 '24 at 14:11