Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.

10
Communities

Yves Christen is something of a contradiction -- or maybe the right term is hybrid. He is trim, of average height, and well-groomed, and has blond-ish-brown hair with grey streaks. Jack Kemp would covet Christen's blow-dryer. His sharp, alert features and smooth, precise gestures suggest a French bureaucrat. Yet there is a dash of uncalculated hail-fellow-well-met as he strides into and through the restaurant: a pinch American, even Bavarian. Christen glances around confidently. His eyes take in a number of friends that he knows, but is not afraid to make contact with the occasional stranger.

Christen's words are measured, his voice soft. Answering questions he speaks smoothly, but without that intangible, tenth-of-a-second mental look upward that one feels with an American politician -- the moment when everything seems to go through a little high-speed computer before the slightly fabricated answer is meted out. Christen looks you in the eye and answers; you are talking to Christen. His native tongue is French but his German is good, his English stops for the right word twice or so a sentence, but is passable.

In other words, Christen is a little bit, in the best sense of the word, of a mutt -- a polyglot man in a polyglot nation. He embodies something very Swiss, the blending of diversities. You can't understand the Swiss democracy without going to its communities, its communes and cantons, and meeting its part-time mayors, its housewives, and police chiefs.

Christen is the town council chairman of the city of Vevey. He is also a member of parliament. We saw him earlier on the same day, voting for the two new federal council members, the future presidents of Switzerland. Christen also has a law practice or some small business to make ends meet -- another citizen lawmaker in a nation of them.

One cannot understand Switzerland without getting down to the particular canton, its communes, and the specific people who make up the communes. In any country, as Mark Twain observed, "The people are the real thing... the country itself." Christen is a sort of embodiment of this, although, in Switzerland, they have several million embodiments of it. He would be the first to deny there is anything special about him.

Vevey

Tonight, Christen and the other council members will vote on five new Swiss citizens -- that is, on whether five foreign-born families may become citizens. There are other matters on the agenda for the meeting we'll attend, including the one that was on the front page of newspapers across the country: the fire that destroyed a block of low-income housing units just days before. Reading the small schedule of items to be discussed from the local paper, however, the matter of the immigrants struck me.

Here in Christen was one official, on the very same day, participating in one of the "highest" acts of state, the choosing of a future president, and one of the most humble (in the literal sense of the word) or basic, deciding who is a Swiss citizen and who is not.

The item was around the middle of the official notice of the "Conseil Communal de Vevey" in La Presse de Vevey a few days before:

9. Report on:

Request to incorporate (agregation) the residents...

1. M. Tekik Djikoli and his minor son, from Yugoslavia
2. Miss Deborah Melchiorre, from Italy
3. Mrs. Sebastiana Pinieri and her three minor children, from Italy
4. Mr. Gheorghe-Gavril Pop, from Romania, and his spouse, also from Romania.
5. Mr. Gian Franco Sentinelli and his spouse, from Italy (1/99).

In importance and symbolism, of course, the council will be committing one of the quintessential acts of statecraft. The question of who is a citizen goes to the heart of what a citizen is and, therefore, what the country itself is. This issue has been fought and died over -- the American Civil War, for instance -- and with good reason. From antiquity, it meant something to be a Roman citizen, a member of the commune of Sparta, a burgher of Switzerland. Jean-Jacques Rousseau took the matter seriously enough that, years after becoming an expatriate, he proudly signed his works "citizen of Geneva," and John F. Kennedy stirred souls around the world by declaring himself a "citizen of Berlin."

That the Swiss handle it this way -- at the local level of government and indeed in a kind of election -- is rich with meaning. The decision was to be handed down not by a bureaucrat applying rules and stamps in an impersonal office. Instead, in Switzerland, the prospective fellow citizens of these applications were meeting in the open to discuss the matter and vote. "It is simple," a member of the town council explained as we milled around outside the hall. "Citizenship is conferred by citizens."

Vevey is a city of approximately 15,000 persons located on the North side of Lac de Leman, or the Lake of Geneva, perhaps thirty miles West of the lake's Eastern tip. Though Vevey plays home to the headquarters of Nestle Corporation, the giant food products and pharmaceutical company, it has fallen on something of a recession. Vevey suffers one of the highest unemployment rates in Switzerland. Being Switzerland, this means it is at or even over 5 percent, but being Switzerland, this is an unusual and troublesome figure. This economic reality adds perhaps a slight edge to the proceedings regarding the applicants for citizenship. One of the most common complaints of proponents of reduced immigration is that foreigners are "taking up jobs" or, if not this, the related argument that they "drive down wages" by offering their labor cheaply.

We file into what seems to be an old church or theater with high-backed wooden benches. (The room reminds me of the meeting hall at the Grafton County Theatre in Hanover, New Hampshire, where then-presidential candidate Jerry Brown gave a speech during my junior year at college.) There are 100 members of the council, Christen told me earlier; today, there are (by my count) 82 in attendance. About 50 members are men -- 10 or less wear suits and appear to be professionals, the rest dress more casually, and there are perhaps 7 or 8 in work outfits or uniforms. The other 32 are women -- approximately -- and they are dressed at roughly the same level of formality as the men. Some nonbusiness-suit dresses, more pants, corduroys, and blue jeans. There is one woman who looks credibly like the comedienne Gilda Radner, and one fellow in a very expensive pin-striped suit. Other than that, most of the council members are not striking in appearance. There is also a young fellow in a green rugby shirt, about 25, sharp, articulate -- just watching his movements, and the way he makes careful notes during some of the early pro-forma introductions, it strikes me that this is likely to be one of the more active members. "Rugby shirt guy," my note pad dubs him: RSG in notes.

The first few items on the agenda are procedural -- filing reports for the public record, approving minutes, that sort of thing. During the new business section, a man in a yellow shirt ("leading socialist," my guide for the evening whispers) stands up to complain about the smoking habit of the local school principal. "It is not a bad thing from time to time," he says. "But the man who is advocating this is in charge of our children at school." There is scattered applause from about one-fourth of the members. A note on my pad: "Swiss federalism also means power to set standards."

There is some shuffling of papers up front and a very mild hum on the floor as everyone realizes there is no specific resolution to be voted on, but the fellow in the yellow shirt seems to want some sort of acknowledgment. Rugby shirt guy stands up to say, "If someone on this council did something as stupid" as the principal, they would be chastised roundly before the council. Soft laughter and nods of agreement. The council member with the yellow shirt looks over and smiles appreciatively. "Still, the man is not here, so we should probably let this go. The government should discuss it with him" -- by which he probably meant the executive council or the mayor's office.

Soon we were up to item nine, the immigrants. Someone in the front reads the names, as if in an introduction. Are they going to appear, be interviewed perhaps? No, the chairman is only giving a few scattered details from the report by the council's committee on immigration matters.

We glance over to the right at a group of ten to twelve people in the back observation area with us; from the complexions and their interest in the proceedings, they could be some of the immigrant families.

Some questions go up to the chair.

"These are all recommended?"

The chairman confers with his colleague.

"Yes. I thought we had said that" -- he had, actually -- "but I was checking because you asked."

A woman in the front talked about the difficulty in the schools assimilating different language groups. There were some nods of agreement, but no great stir.

Rugby shirt guy whispered something to a female colleague of his in the row in front; it seemed not to be about the immigrants but about the forthcoming issue, the fire, from the way she nodded and then looked back at the proceedings -- as if changing the subject.

This had the feeling to me of a ritual in which everyone knew how the votes on such things tend to turn out, but was respecting the need to ask some questions, make a few remarks -- like a shopper who knows what car he wants, but feels he should spend a few minutes kicking the tires commenting about the mileage just to make sure he is being thoughtful and responsible.

Ballots (slips of very cheap paper; this is Switzerland) are passed around for the council members to vote on. There is low-key discussion as the members write down their votes on each applicant, but less movement than, say, during a typical vote in the U.S. Congress or a state legislature. The chair expects the procedure to last two or three minutes, not fifteen. He is not rushing anyone -- that would make it feel like a vital decision was being made hastily -- but there is a shared feeling that people will vote and the matter move on.

The ballots are collected and there is some brief discussion among those of us in the back. Will they announce the votes right away or wait until the end of the meeting? "Oh, no, it takes four or five minutes, they will just do it now. Everyone wants a little break before they discuss the fire anyway."

Over to the right, a woman -- Mrs. Penieri? Miss Melchiori? she has no children with her -- shifts a little bit on her seat.

The gavel up front bangs softly and the chair prepares to read the results. He confers one more time with a woman on his left, the deputy chairman, and the room quiets down. A man in the back section with us stands up, apparently to hear better. He has dark, Mediterranean skin; probably another immigrant.

"Monsieur Djikoli et son fils... Oui... septante-trois... "

Seventy-three yes -- that should be plenty if my count of eighty-two members is anywhere close to right.

"No, sept."

So the count is 73-7; Missouir Djikoli is a Swiss citizen.

And make that eighty members, not eighty-two -- unless a couple didn't vote. My count was not exact, but darn close.

During the slight buzz my attention was distracted from the vote on Ms. Melchiorre, but the chairman is now summarizing that vote again -- it appears to be 75-7. Since her status is very different from that of Mr. Djikoli, the implication is that most of the members have a certain take on immigration and they vote for or against, with occasional exceptions.

The fellow on the right is sitting down now. Djikoli, perhaps? He is in the back by the coatroom talking to a boy with his hand on his shoulder.

"Madame... Pinieri... etses troismineures... soixante-six." So Mrs. Piniere was in; good.

"Pop ... soixante-cinq. ... Sentinelli... soixante-cinq."

So on this night, all the immigrants were approved. Vevey now had another eleven mouths to feed -- or, depending upon your views of human potential, another Henri Nestle or Albert Einstein.

The council members seem optimistic. There is warm and sustained applause for the vote, something that did not take place during the rest of the meeting, nor at any other official function we visited in Switzerland except during the speeches and announcements at the federal council vote earlier that day.

One of our friends from the dinner whispers something to my traveling companion.

"This is unusual," my friend passes on the comment. "Most are accepted, maybe 80 percent, but usually not all."

Indeed, in the mid-1980s, Carlo Schmid invited Aleksander Solzhynitsyn to the Appenzell Landsgemeinde and to various community meetings to observe democracy in action. Appenzell (Innerrhoden) is a Landsgemeinde canton, so all the laws of the canton and important decisions -- such as citizenship -- are in fact taken at the annual meeting.

When it came time to vote on the applications for citizenship at one of the meetings, Schmid apologized to his guest for the seeming crudity of what was about to happen -- a fraternity popularity vote, perhaps, with people's lives in the balance. As the votes came in, about a third were negative, and Schmid explained again, afraid that the great Russian writer would think something less of Swiss liberalism to see such a display.

"No, you are wrong to apologize," Solzhynitsyn reassured him. "This is the way citizens should be made -- and not made."

There is the same simple but electric radicalism one sees in so many Swiss practices -- that pervasive, unrestrained democratic faith.

Lugano

As we pull out of the Lugano train station, there is a low thud.

A sideways movement, and then the taxi cab slides to a stop. We have hit the car in front of us in its right rear bumper.

A man, about age sixty, looks back out of the car in front. His license plate indicates ("BE") he is visiting from Bern. The taxi driver looks at me and says something in Italian. My eyes glaze and he tries again. "I have to go talk."

The driver gets out of the car and walks unassumingly but directly up to the car in front. The driver of the other car gets out with a weary smile. A good sign: He's not happy to be doing this, but at the same time he's decently cheerful about it. Well, this is Switzerland -- hopefully we can get the matter taken care of in ten or fifteen minutes and be on our way.

Where is my laptop -- here in the back seat or in the trunk? Good -- there it is in its little black case. My hand reaches down to split open the case and turn it on, and the reassuring humming begins.

My driver and the man from the car in front seem to be talking politely but not yet agreeing on anything. No one has called the police, but a couple of horns toot behind us. The two men walk back now to look at the dent, and my driver is reaching for his wallet, a good sign.

As they reach the back of the car, their voices become more audible. They are speaking German; evidently the Bernese man is not fluent in Italian. Meanwhile, the computer is asking me something about "Scandisk" -- evidently my Windows program did not "shut down properly." This happens from time to time. "Y" for yes, "Y" for yes, "D" for delete, "S" for skip the undo process -- my left hand types the answers to the queries as my right hand jots fragments from the conversation up in front.

"There is some damage, I told you this. ... Yes, there it is. That would normally cost about 100 francs to get fixed."

The other man looks skeptical. He doesn't appear to be bargaining or anything for the sake of bargaining; he just doubts the dent he sees can be fixed for 100 francs (about $63).

"Well, where I take my car I would say it's more like 200 francs."

The cab driver looks back at me in the car. My computer is scanning files, moving into that phase where the file names roll by very quickly.

"If you take that to so-and-so in the suchlike district, they will fix it for no more than 150 francs," the cab driver offers hopefully.

"Maybe, but you are talking about a forty-five-minute drive each way. In this bad weather." It is raining in the Ticino -- much warmer than the rest of Switzerland in March, about 50 degrees today, but wet.

"How would this be? We split the difference, it is 175 francs."

Icons are starting to appear on my computer "desktop." It's just about ready for me to start typing notes.

"I think that is fair," the driver of the other car says.

"Okay," the cab driver says in English. He looks back at me for a second and then does some shuffling with the bills in his hand, pulls out a few coins (probably five franc pieces to make the twenty-five francs over 150), and hands the mass to the other man.

Looking down, it strikes me that we are about to take off now and it is time to shut down the computer. The driver climbs back in. "Please wait," the computer screen tells me, "for your computer to shut down."

"Now, where we go?," the driver asks.

"Just a second -- momentli bitted There -- ta dah, the little Windows tune plays -- the computer is shut down, it's ready to be closed up.

As we pull away to my next stop -- the office of a newspaper editor -- it strikes me that the two men have solved their problem in about the time it takes my laptop to boot up. With a Scandisk program detour, that's about 150 seconds. The principals were a taxicab driver and a tourist, who speak different first languages, at a fairly busy train station. No insurance forms were filed, no information exchanged.

We pull around a kind of circular drive and do a 180-degree turn. As we pass by the station from the other angle, it becomes clear that there is a policeman directing traffic, though he is not very busy. There is some kind of minor construction at the end of the street. Evidently he saw no need to intervene, and the two drivers felt no need to involve him.

Hittnau

There probably is no such thing as a typical Swiss town, but if a composite were formed, Hittnau would not be far off. The town, not quite 2,500 in population, is not far from Zurich -- perhaps forty minutes away. Most of the townspeople work in the city or in its periphery of offices. Our hostess on the church council is employed at an asset management company. Long commutes are not nearly as common in Switzerland as among the Americans or even the British, but land is scarce and as families grow, if they want to own a home with a stretch of grass around it they must go to places like Hittnau.

We arrive late in the day; it is hard to see much, but from the age of some of the buildings, and the clientele at the local tavern we visit for dinner, it seems clear that there is a substantial "native" population of people who grew up here and who probably have children and parents here too. One is reminded of (say) Greenwich, Connecticut, or McLean, Virginia -- on a smaller scale, of course. Many of the people you see, probably most, work in the city, but the bartender or owner of the restaurant you are in might be a fifth-generation native, or a second-generation immigrant, who seldom leave the town. Though we are in the heart of German-Protestant Switzerland, under the shadow of Ziirich and Zwingli, the town is diverse. About one-fourth of the people are Roman Catholic. There are some immigrants, though not as many as in the large cities.

We arrive at what appears to be a school or office building -- flat, bricks; it is in fact the community hall -- and hustle in through a back door. It is 4:28, we are twenty-eight minutes late for our meeting, and everyone is seated around a table, ready to go. Around the table are five of the members of the town council or other leading members of the town: a member of the church council, Mrs. Buhrer, and her husband, Dr. Buhrer; two of the ladies from the town council; and a woman who is active in the school management, though not a teacher, as well as in the operation of the town's (one, Protestant) church. There was going to be someone from the police force of one man, part time, who makes calls in Hittnau when needed from the next town, Pfaffikon, but he could not make it. Not that there has been a mugging or a robbery. "Most of his time is spent looking for a few road violations or handing out official documents," the lady from the town council explains. "We do not have much crime," the schoolteacher smiles.

Several of my questions sent in advance have had to do with the intermingling of church and state in Switzerland. This, of course, is very different from what one would see in the United States of the late twentieth or early twenty-first centuries, and one sees it most clearly in the towns. Accordingly they begin with a brief series of presentations on this issue. There are more of the hand-written graphs and flow charts, not done on a computer but carefully drawn with ballpoint pens and rulers.

Dr. Buhrer seems somewhat apologetic, explaining that the taxes going to the church (about 10 percent of the community rate) are optional and can be avoided by filling out a card. Many people who are not active in the church, he says, continue to pay the taxes out of a desire to contribute something, even if they are not religious. He anticipates my next question by adding, "There is a Catholic Church about twenty minutes over. I do not think there are Jewish people in Hittnau, but the people who practice other religions tend to do so in the cities -- for us, Zurich."

Like many of the churches in Switzerland, and particularly in Bern, Geneva, and Zurich, the Hittnau church seems to be functionally similar to the "civil religion" that Rousseau speculated about as the ideal for his small, virtuous republic. Religion has been integrated with, almost subsumed into, the Swiss democracy -- it is partly secular. The faith is not highly partisan or even doctrinal in character, certainly not here in Hittnau.

"What is the biggest controversy you've had here -- have there been any divisive issues in Hittnau?" My traveling companion scrunches a little bit, as if thinking, here goes the American journalist again, asking about a scandal in the church choir or a kickback scheme at the zoning board. My interest in controversy, however, is not morbid, nor focused on ethics. One learns a lot about a system when it is under stress -- its flaws and strengths sometime come out in relief. What do the Swiss do when they have a political problem?

Our hosts from Hittnau were nonplused, but no one had a ready answer. Mrs. Buhrer smiled and looked around the table and the others smiled back, apparently trying sincerely to remember anything that had gotten heated within the council.

Then one of the council members explained, "about three months ago, we had a vote that was four to three. This happens from time to time. I think in this case it was about something in the school, not something people were angry about, but just something where there was a close difference of opinion.

"But you must realize, in these cases, what happens is that everyone on the council defends the decision, and there is no sniping or attacking of each other. We have a strong culture of consensus, a tendency to try to work things out on a solution that we can all agree on in the end."

This phrase about consensus comes up often in Switzerland; it leaves me skeptical. There is a faint aroma of the mysterious way people used to talk about Japanese society -- before the collapse of its economy made this rolling "consensus" seem less robust than hapless.

"It seems like people everywhere would like to have this kind of approach. People in Bosnia would like to have this kind of harmony, they just can't get it. Are people in Switzerland just very nice, very cooperative? Or are there things that you do that facilitate this?"

My companion seems to like the question. "Gregory is trying to get an understanding of why it works this way -- how is this possible?" Again there are some mutual looks across the table, but some nods and mild thought frowns.

"I think part of it is, we work with everyone in the town -- there is broad consultation," answers Mrs. Buhrer. "When you have a small town like this and many things are done on a volunteer basis, you work that way."

"Another factor you have to remember," her husband adds, "is that many of these things are referred to the people anyway."

In Hittnau, as in nearly all the communes, everything from the town budget to the creation of a no-smoking zone near the train station is voted on by the community. Someone slides me a small booklet with the town budget, which appears to be mass-produced for the voters. "This gives you a certain notion -- well, it causes things to be done with them in mind. I do not mean that negatively, that people are looking over our shoulders. I mean that there is a certain reality, a certain rough sketch you could draw of what people basically want. It is there, whether someone disagrees with a part of it, it is there. We view our job as trying to approximate that picture."

The picture he is talking about, in fact, is going to come into being in rough terms anyway, at some point or another, because the system almost cannot resist going to it. 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. Of course, it is more than that; there is a sincere interest in the faces around me in cooperating with one another. But it is not less than that. The system itself encourages, rather than discourages, this nonpartisan approach.

Thus the "politics of consensus" is, in part, a concomitant of direct democracy and decentralization. It defuses personal disputes and zero-sum competition between leaders, and at the same time builds a culture of collaboration between the people and their politicians. (Under the militia system and at this level of government especially, the people are the politicians.) Notice that while there is nothing to prevent this from happening in representative democracy, it is less automatic. The legislator may hope to please all constituents by working the system to take contradictory positions on different bills; the bottom line is more confused. He does not, in any case, feel with any certainty that any particular issue he is deciding may be referred to the people -- in fact, it almost certainly will not be, in a direct sense, and even in an indirect sense, of a particular issue becoming important in his next election race, the odds are rather remote.

Mrs. Buhrer, who (we later found out) was going into the hospital for surgery the next day, sensed my interest in this connection between consensus politics and direct democracy. She explained, "We view ourselves as trying to bring about..." -- she looked over to a colleague for the right word -- "trying to facilitate choices, do what the people want. It is our job to do this well and offer intelligent choices."

Hugo Butler told us a few days later about the case of a church in Stein, a small Rhein town, where an influx of Italian immigrants took place one year. The next year, the Italians were invited to the church council meeting for its budget discussion. When the subject of fees and tax payments came up, the Italians, joined by a few of the native Swiss, voiced their preference not to have any. The rest of the members tried to explain this would mean drastic changes in the church service but the money was voted down anyway. With Swiss logic and efficiency, the discussion then turned to planning for a year in which there would be no funerals, no weddings, and an absence of many other things the people were used to. The participants now understood that their actions had consequences and that they were in charge -- but regretted what they had done with their authority. The fees and tax assessments were restored and the meeting went back to its previous track.

Thus community government in Switzerland does not merely operate on the philosophy of giving the people what they want. Because a member of a community, one of the people, is not indifferent to the question of whether the people's understanding of what the options are is informed, or corrupt, or misled, or intelligent. It is, rather, a style of leadership that accepts the citizen as sovereign, and therefore looks to the improvement and perfection of the citizen as the best (and ultimately, the only) way to bring about effective solutions. Rather than merely reading about self-government, however, the Swiss learn, as well, by doing.

Perhaps the largest disruption of elite expectations through the referendum process took place in recent years when the Swiss rejected full political and economic integration into the European Union. One can argue the merits of this case either way. Even many proponents have the expectation, as investor and respected trade negotiator David de Pury put it, that "in the end, the referendum process will probably improve the terms on which Switzerland

My train is chugging North toward Bellinzona. We are not going to make it in time for me to visit the cantonal statistics office, which from the telephone sounds like an information gold mine. At a little before six, on a Friday, they have already closed. Outside in a tiny park area is a kiosk with announcements; there appears to be some kind of discussion meeting at 7:30 on the other side of the train station about the snow removal, or fixing the roads in the spring, or transporting people to some spring event -- to me it's a bunch of Italian words and a nice little picture of a truck in snow, one that looks like it was taken off the Internet or from one of those "graphic images."

There is a small news stand by the train station where the lady probably speaks a little English, or can understand even my German. She directs me to a coffee shop pub not far up the street.

Inside there are seven or eight men and women around a table. Most are drinking coffee or some warm beverage; one or two have a soda or a beer. "Is it okay for me to join you who's not from the town?" -- those are, roughly, my words to the group, in very poor German.

A woman at the head of the table looks at me for a second. In addition to the natural, human sizing up of the other person, she is giving me the "Swiss Language Look": What is his accent? Where is he from? How do I address him? She frowns slightly in concentration.

"Yes, okay -- for the meeting?," the woman answers in English. Like most Swiss, she can tell, even when listening to what is a second or third language for her, what the accent of the speaker is and instantly either shift into English to accommodate me, or respond in German -- but with a few English words like "okay" peppered in, apparently to let me know there is a little help available, if needed. A couple of Swiss told me that my dress is a further tip-off, but that was probably not a factor today -- although it is true that my efforts to maintain at least a few seconds of national anonymity did much better on the telephone, particularly in conversations with French-speaking Swiss.

"You will have to wait a while sir -- for the meeting. Would you like anything?" the woman asks.

"An American coffee, please, would be very nice." Only it undoubtedly wasn't nearly as smooth as in this translation. "It's okay with you, to work on this, my German?"

"Yes, naturally," she answers in German.

"Or you can work on this, your Italian," a younger man from the table comments and chuckles. The woman laughs too; the young man turns to explain his joke to the others. The guy has scored two or three points: He said something in English, he's made nice banter, and he's loosened up the group.

"You only think I speak Italian because you've heard my German." They chuckle.

An awkward little silence follows, which is my chance to explain why an American has any interest at all in their meeting. My little speech about democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, and this book follows.

"Are you the town council?" My eyes roam around the table: Five men, three women, mostly older than me, two of the men younger, both in their early thirties. The woman translates briefly for her friends and then answers me.

"No, but I am on it and several of these are. We are a committee that works with the council to try to help some of the older people and others get plowed. They are supposed to get plowed by the town, but the town can't afford to get everyone; we do not want to have to buy more equipment. These people don't need that level of service anyway; they are not asking for it; but they want something more than being left where they are now."

The woman appears to be sort of the head of the group, at least in this functional setting. The other people at the table ask her questions in Italian and she points or answers and more or less leads the conversation.

"In a few minutes we will start," she says.

We are waiting for someone named Marko or Marceau, an auto mechanic who has a snowplow, to show up, as well as for a couple of retired people who want to complain about the roads being closed.

Two old men arrive in hunting-jacket plaid-type shirts; the one bears some resemblance to the "Fred Turbo" character that used to appear on Johnny Carson. The woman announces something to the small group, now at the table. Then she turns to me and says, "I am telling them we had scheduled this for thirty minutes. Marko is not here. We are going to hear from these men and then discuss it and see if we can come up with something."

The two men, speaking politely, appear to be laying out a request -- something about Tuesdays and Fridays, or the weekend. One man, with very soft-looking boots -- the non-Fred-Turbo fellow -- has brought a little map, nothing fancy, but a crisp, hand-drawn map. He has made three copies -- enough to pass around the table and let everyone have a look, but not splurging on eight or ten copies to provide everyone with an original.

The woman looks over her shoulder at me, handing me the brown file she has had on her left. Vintage Swiss: running the meeting, solving the problem, translating for the outsider, and briefing the journalist; no fanfare.

"They are here to speak for the people who have various complaints," she explains. "These are the complaints. There aren't that many problems, but we should do a better job on the side road that feeds off into that area. But the canton is always complaining to us if we neglect certain of the other roads."

She looks at the clock; 7:48. The men are still talking at the end of the table. She looks back at me, for another translation McNugget.

"Marko offered to do some plowing for the people, but he charges other people for services -- he is using his own machine. He does not mind doing it for free for a few, but then others complain. The town does not want to have to pay him, either. We are trying to work something out."

One of the older men, the Fred Turbo fellow, has a question. A young man at the end of the table answers; Fred Turbo seems satisfied. He looks at the woman and nods. She asks the other gentleman, the one with the soft boots, a question, apparently something like, "Is that all right?," because he looks a little glum, but nods. It appears he is not totally satisfied, but can live with it.

The woman starts to lead a short prayer or statement. The clock says 8:04. She crosses herself at the end; it was definitely a prayer. Some of the others cross themselves, some do not.

"Our granddaughter has a such-and-such tonight," the lady says. She didn't say "such-and-such," but she said some German word that wasn't familiar to me. "I hope you will excuse us for leaving so soon."

"Of course -- do you mind telling me what happened?"

"Here?" She gestured with her hand at the table. The two older men were smiling and drinking some warm beverage out of tall cups with the young fellows.

"Yes -- if you have a minute."

"Well, when Marko comes, I will tell him he has to plow the roads for the town. And the town won't pay him. But he will get paid. I think some of the people who would like to see that road plowed more often will pay him a little extra to do some other plowing he already does for them -- you understand? A little extra, not the full amount. I am not going to tell the older men about this; as far as they are concerned it is the commune, and in a way it is. So they will get their service every so often with respect to the snow. If they want more often, or faster, they will have to pay Marko something extra. I told them that is only fair."

The meeting, and the woman's explanation, reminded me that even in the heart of democracy, a little secrecy and elite leadership are sometimes necessary. Maybe, in fact, there is no real contradiction between them. In a more regimented, top-down system, the woman would have eventually fallen prey to the rules. There would have to be a rationalized, concrete regula-tion about snowplow usage, who pays, what people's entitlements are, and so on.

In Switzerland, there are rules, to be sure, but there is confidence in whatever can be worked out by the people of the community too. It is not just rules, or just anarchy, nor a kind of 50-50 compromise between the two. The woman was able to work something out partly because she has intimate knowledge of the situation, partly because she has people's trust, partly because she doesn't have the power to merely compel a solution -- but a number of parties are looking to her to help them find one.

It is the combination of decentralization and democracy; of economic freedom but also a kind of local communism. "Culture of consensus," the Swiss like to call it, but in their Swiss way, they neglect to leave instructions as to how this consensus is achieved. Joe Nye, the Dean at the Kennedy School, calls this the use of "soft power," of leadership by example and craft and persuasion. There are probably whole business school management books written about it. Table 10.1 reviews not only which powers the Swiss allocate certain functions locally, but in some cases, how the local government handles them. The two factors must be thought of as one, or at any rate, as inextricably linked.

Appenzell and Swiss Commune-ism

The result of this combination of decentralization and democracy is a kind of politico-spiritual mystery, a democracy seance.1 The paradox is highlighted by something very astute that one of Carlo Schmid's constituents said about Schmid and about the Landsgemeinde. Schmid is the senator from Appenzell Innerhoden, but also the Landamman -- the mayor or chairman of the cantonal council. He therefore chairs the annual "town meeting" at which the citizens of the whole canton make the laws and approve the program for the state for the coming year -- voting on citizens, questioning budgets, demanding more snowplows or fewer. The constituent was a nice lady, about fifty years old, who ran a little news stand near the town hall or cantonal seat -- some impressively old building under renovation. She was telling me about the forthcoming Landsgemeinde, and some of the issues, flipping through a notebook of pictures she had. On one page were the men in their uniforms and swords, ceremoniously marching into the great square. On another they were raising hands to vote; another, separating. "This fellow," she told me, "is sort of a heckler. Not really a heckler, but he likes to talk, likes to act up a bit."

"Mr. Schmid really knows how to handle him," she continued. "He keeps the business moving, but everyone feels they have their say; it is fair.

"You know, our system, because of the degree of democracy, places a great importance on effective leadership."

On the surface, of course, nothing could place less importance on leadership than a democracy. Everything is the people, to an extent that some feel the system caters too much to the popular mood or fancy.

Yet, on the other hand, this places the skill of the leader at a higher level. "It takes more skill to deal with people," as Francois Loeb commented in talking about the direct democracy, "than to deal with chess pieces. People are chess pieces with a mind and will of their own."

Schmid, in putting together and holding a Landsgemeinde with thousands of voters in one place, is in effect holding and planning an American political convention. And unlike the typical presidential nominating convention, the results are not preordained; the decisions taken are real decisions, they could go either way. The "heckler" is a voter and a taxpayer who must be handled with a certain fairness.

The Swiss system is highly dependent on its Schmids -- on the lady in Bellinzona nuancing Marko into plowing the old man's street for the city, but not on a city line item. This dependency on citizenship is one of democracy's great strengths in Switzerland, but would make this system awkward or even dangerous if applied uncritically in other countries -- countries where the capacity for real self-government, for popular leadership, has grown somewhat weak through lack of use or a lack of real power.

This does not mean the Swiss system, or major parts of it, may not be usefully emulated. It does mean that those who do will have to give some thought to creating the kind of citizens needed to carry out the steps of this sensitive political dance -- a system that extols majority rule but is constantly yielding, willingly, to the minority; where laws are clear and simple, yet are there as tools to be handled with flexibility and common sense. George Bernard Shaw once complained of communism that "it takes up too many evenings." The same is true of democracy in Switzerland -- or Swiss commune-ism, if you well. It takes up a lot of evenings.

We have looked at the history of Swiss institutions and we have looked at the institutions as such -- viewing the parts of the whole somewhat in connection, somewhat in isolation, but always in something of an abstract or static framework.

To understand how democracy in Switzerland really works, however, it is best to take a look at some of the actual problems and conditions it deals with. How do the Swiss organize their schools? Pay their taxes? Defend themselves? What sort of problems have they proven adept at answering, and what sort, if any, does the Swiss system appear ill equipped to deal with?


Note

1. Interestingly, a "seance," or "meeting," is how a typical political gathering is described in the French cantons, a fact that always tickled me when reading the Tribune de Geneve: "At its seance last night, the city council of Fribourg voted to compensate victims of last month's flood using the city's capital budget," or, "the federal council will deal with the shortfall in cantonal budgets at a seance next week."