Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.6
Executives BranchUnusual though they are, most Swiss political institutions can be readily categorized. Many laws are made using a device employed elsewhere only occasionally: direct democracy. The army, with few exceptions, has universal male service. The courts are businesslike; the society, if we may use a much-abused term, multicultural; the press, low-key; and the businesses are even more businesslike than the courts.
The Swiss executive is equally distinctive, but harder to characterize. It is corporate in nature. Most executive decisions are rendered by an executive council of seven members. There is a president, who chairs the meetings of the council and acts on its behalf in certain cases where a single authority may be needed. Yet a visiting king or queen is normally met at a reception by all seven members of the council. The president serves only a one-year term, elected by the others but normally in an informal (but not mandatory) rotation with the others. Even as such, he or she takes practically no actions, at least of a policy nature, as president. Rather, the seven-member board acts as one body. The votes are confidential and each member, regardless of his vote, is expected to stand by and indeed energetically defend the decision of the group.
At any meeting of the council, then -- about once a week in modern times -- the president is looking at a group of former and future presidents, and they look at him as a former and future energy minister, secretary of state, or other officer in one of "their" administrations. Conveniently, there are precisely seven ministries, each one filled by one member of the council: The president and vice-president continue to run one of the ministries during their term. When asked recently what would happen if the Swiss decided they needed eight cabinet agencies or, say, ten council members, a Swiss diplomat smiled at me and said, "Right now, we have seven councilors and seven ministries, so it works rather well." Thus, the cabinet reshufflings are among the most frequent in the modern world, rivaling Italy or Russia. But they take place on a schedule, every December, and with many of the changes preordained. The Swiss executive branch is a little bit chaos, a little bit minuet.
One might say that "the Swiss have no chief executive," as political scientist Oswald Sigg has written. At the least, one is reminded of the scene in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" in which the peasant Dennis attempts to explain the workings of his "anarcho-syndicalist commune," with its quaint aroma of nineteenth-century socialism. King Arthur, befuddled and increasingly impatient, keeps asking, "But where is your lord?"
Members of the executive council are not chosen directly by the people -- here the Swiss system departs from its usual populism -- but by the two houses of parliament meeting in joint session. The parliament may choose anyone it likes under the constitution for the executive council and thus, as a future president. In practice, though, the matter is more complicated. Under an unwritten arrangement going back many decades, the "magic formula," a series of guidelines for selection that work somewhat like a quota -- and somewhat not like a quota. For instance, it is thought desirable to have at least one person on the seven-member council to represent one of the three national languages: Italian, French, and Swiss. As well, each of the three largest cantons -- Zurich, Berne, and Vaud -- normally receives a representative. On the other hand, no canton is to enjoy two residents on the Federal Council -- again by practice and tradition, but not by legal requirement.
Furthermore, each of the four largest parties customarily has an assigned number of seats: two seats for the Radical Democrats (which is actually a centrist or center-left party), two for the Christian Democrats, two for the Social Democrats, and one for Swiss People's Party. None of this is a matter of constitutional or even legal formula, though. Most of this web of understandings is not even written down, except in the sense that it has been discussed much since evolving -- parts of the agreement, such as the need for a balance of languages, going back to 1848.
The formula for the parties has inhered since 1959, despite the ebb and flow of certain parties since. At the start, it probably underrepresented the Christian Democrats and Radical Democrats; it may now overrepresent them.
During the replacement of two federal councilors in 1999, which it was my privilege to attend by invitation of the parliament, there was much speculation in the galleries about the possibility that the Radicals (the equivalent of the Christian Democrats in Europe, the Tories in England, or the Republicans in the U.S.) might lose one of their traditional seats. Ultimately the party held onto its seats, in part by the device of nominating two young women to fill the two posts. The Swiss are no less eager than others to advance qualified women to such posts, given their desire to be and to appear to be fair on questions of gender. The Swiss, indeed, may be more keen to do so, as women were only given the vote in national elections in 1971. In any case, the magic formula was clearly under stress, but this time, it held.
It is a measure of the discipline of the Swiss voters and their politicians that such an arrangement could long endure even were it a binding, legal contract. Here, we are talking only about a handshake, a verbal promise, that has been honored by dozens of politicians over four decades.
Not only the composition of the Federal Council, but also its workings, are remarkable. The members meet in a "respectful, even collegial manner," according to Kurt Furgler, a distinguished former Federal Council member and the former president of Switzerland. "I cannot tell you we did not disagree, or that the disagreements were not, on rare occasions, highly unpleasant. But they were no worse, and probably better, than the other political bodies and meetings I have been a part of." We must remember that this particular arrangement would seem to be a highly combustible one. This "cabinet" does not consist of members of a single party nor does it have such a party or even unified philosophy at the core. The cabinet members were not appointed by the president; there is no person or even unified office to whom they owe their loyalty. Instead we find members of four competing parties, covering a wide portion of the ideological spectrum -- with linguistic, religious, and other differences thrown in for good measure. It would seem, on the surface, to be as much a very exclusive senate, or council of lords, as an executive.
After reaching its decisions and voting (in private) on the results, the members of-the Federal Council join in supporting and explaining the policy to the public as one body. They do not take sides against one another regarding a decision thus made. Naturally nuances of difference may emerge when discussing ongoing issues and problems, but even these are rare and are carried on in a constructive, not a bitterly partisan, tone. There would be little to gain from this, since the next election will not cause a revolution in the composition of the executive, and there is little need for it, since policies that are not in line with the popular will are inevitably overturned or adjusted anyway.
Only a few times have the voting results from a national council meeting leaked out in the press -- generally close decisions on a 4-3 vote, on highly sensitive issues such as genetic research, abortion, and welfare reform. The editors of the major Swiss papers who met with me said that they have never spiked a story with such information out of sheer patriotism, but neither do they press their reporters to come up with such stories.
"We respect the government's right to have a confidential conversation," as Konrad Stamm, the editor of Der Bund, one of the oldest and most distinguished papers, put it, "as they respect our right to have a confidential conversation here. And it is after all our government, the government of Switzerland."
This spirit on the part of the Swiss press -- which 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 -- is one of many special factors that make the executive-by-committee system work-able for Switzerland, but arguably not for the United States, at least under present conditions. It is hard to imagine such a convention being respected in the U.S. media, particularly for the executive branch, though something like it is extended to other institutions, such as the Supreme Court.
One obvious danger comes in time of crisis. Without a unified executive, who is to rally the country? The proverbial horse designed in committee is known for its unworkability; but it might be added that such a horse may also take forever to be produced. This was the Swiss experience during the French Revolution, when the hapless Vorort' proved unable to mount even a serious resistance to the French invasion. The weakness of such structures is also historically evident from the experience of the United States during its Revolutionary War and the Articles of Confederation.
A review of the system in times of need provides only ambiguous evidence regarding the institution's functionality, since many factors other than the executive itself are at work at such times. From this review, however, we can derive some general principles regarding the dangers and advantages of this "non-chief executive."
Switzerland has had few domestic crises since the SonderBund War, itself suggestive, perhaps, that public order and democracy at least can be reconciled without a powerful, unitary chief of state. Even so, some episodes of national turmoil suggest themselves for review. Among the notable domestic crises are the national strike (Switzerland's last) of 1918, the coming of the Great Depression in 1929, the Jura uprisings of 1960-1978, and the cantonal and city fiscal crisis (Geneva, Zürich, Lausanne) of the 1990s. Episodes of a foreign or military nature include the dispute with Prussia over Neuchatel in 1856-1857, World War II, and the government's handling of accusations that Swiss banks or political institutions are tainted by an association with the Nazi Holocaust.
Switzerland's national strike involved elements of both a domestic crisis and a foreign intervention. Domestic factors were foremost. Though not a combatant, Switzerland suffered economically during the war like most countries, and by 1918, shortages were becoming acute. Also like the combatants, Switzerland had been forced to adopt a "war economy." Switzerland was neutral, but an occupation by Germany or even the Allies was possible. Hence the Swiss had to maintain states of readiness and training, diverting resources to the prevention of war even as others were doing to fight it. The end of war, however, did not bring a return to "normalcy," as U.S. presidential candidate Warren G. Harding complained in 1920. Wartime tax rates remained in place, and partial rationing schemes were in effect.
At the same time the strike was not a matter of spontaneous combustion. It was supported and encouraged by Communist Russia. Having just left Switzerland in April of 1917 and taken power in the November revolution, Lenin was interested in weakening the position of capitalist countries abroad, if for no other reason than to give him a respite to consolidate his new regime in Russia. Despite the falling out between Lenin and some of the leading Swiss Communists, whom Lenin deemed too bourgeois, the Russian Comintern did its best to encourage the movement in Switzerland, as in Germany and other European countries after the war.
This could have been, arguably was, a crisis d'etat. As in Kerensky's Russia, Switzerland's institutions seemed hapless and decentralized. There was -- in a sense, never is -- a strong national political leader. It is hard to see, given the absence of a president with the powers usually accorded one, who could persuade radicals to temper their demands, and elites to grant some -- let alone have the clout to make such a solution stick with both sides grumbling.
What the council did was to work with the natural forces of decentralization and consensus building within the labor movement and a country as a whole. Another way of saying this was, it divided and conquered.
On the first day of the strike -- November 11, 1918 -- members of the federal council met with several of the leading labor representatives to listen to their demands. This meeting included the radicals, but was aimed more at the moderates, some of whom -- such as the Action Committee in Olten -- had already issued a proclamation stating their demands. Most were unexceptionable, and none of the demands by the moderates involved circumventing the democratic process. Among the chief demands of the moderates was establishment of a forty-eight-hour work week; the retirement of the national debt by a tax on capital; introduction of labor conscription; passage of a public works program; and the reformulation of the National Council by a proportional system. At the same time, some forces in the labor movement -- Fritz Brupbacker, co-editor of the Revoluzzer -- were more frankly extreme and insisted that only a takeover of the government by dictatorship of the proletariat would suffice.
Having shown that it would listen to all sides and collaborate with the nonextremists, the council, on the afternoon of November 11th, also called out the police and the militia. The council members issued a stern statement indicating that no violence would be tolerated. Members of the Soviet legation in Bern, which had been collaborating with the most extreme pockets of discontent, were escorted out of the country under heavy guard. Leading members of the parliament commenting in the press indicated a willingness to legislate many of the demands in the nine-point statement issued by the moderates, but not while under the implicit threat of mass disorder and even violence.
On the morning of November 12lh, some labor leaders began to split off from the more radical elements. The radicals, nervously sensing the defections, pushed for more aggressive action in the street. But by now the partial military mobilization was complete; in Bern and Zürich, the streets filled with uniforms. Small incidents took place but the perpetrators were detained immediately.
Meanwhile, the Federal Council had convened an extraordinary session of the parliament, with both chambers convened as one body. Parliament stood firmly behind the Federal Council, repeating its willingness in a near-unani-mous resolution to enact much of the labor agenda, but only once had the strike been called off. That evening, the leaders of the radical wing of the strike organizers, including the executive secretariat of the Social Democratic Party, surrendered themselves at the Federal Council. The next day they capitulated to the council's demand that they call off the strike. In a sense, their action was irrelevant; the strike was dissolving anyway as the rank-and-file workers and peasants read in their newspapers that many of their demands would be met, and that more extreme leaders were under arrest. By the afternoon of November 13, parliament was debating some of the action items. As E. Bonjour, H.S. Offler, and G.R. Potter wrote in A Short History of Switzerland,
the most serious constitutional crisis of the war had been overcome. Work was resumed immediately almost everywhere. Proceedings against the strike leaders led to sentences of imprisonment varying from four weeks to six months. But reforms were carried out which the Socialist minority had demanded in vain both before and during the war.Naturally the crisis had its particular heroes and antagonists. The most active member of the National Council during the national strike was Felix Calonder, who, appropriately enough, was serving his (only) term as president in 1918. Calonder was a popular, no-nonsense politician from GrauBunden -- hearty, Alpine country. He was an advocate of some of the things the socialists and the unions were demanding, having for many years advocated expansion of highway and railway systems for the southeast. He was also a thoughtful student of politics who wrote a university thesis on Swiss neutrality and the challenges to it. Among those he saw, ironically, were troubles arising out of Switzerland's status as a refugee haven -- a practice that brought angry intervention from Metternich and the right in the nineteenth century. An army major, he had no qualms about crushing the strike, if need be.
It was Calonder who devised the somewhat curious order for the strikers to disband. The terse ultimatum carried little by way of legal justification nor, really, any explanation of what would happen if the order was disobeyed. It was, however, effective, especially coming from and in the name of the Bundesrat. Troops marched through the streets of Bern and Zurich in horseback and on foot with mobile artillery in tow. All the while parliament was in session, glancing approvingly at the government's carrot and stick. Fortunately for Switzerland, the strategy worked, and so Calonder can go the way of the other great Swiss presidents -- remembered with a few pages in specialty biographies.
Calonder also made the wise tactical decision, in his opening speech to the special session of parliament, to separate the methods of the strikers from the economic policies they sought. Many of the latter could be discussed, he suggested; a sentiment in line with the members. But the "Swiss democracy" was not negotiable and it was not going to overturn itself. After the strike had wound down, Calonder went back to parliament, informing his colleagues and the country that the "free and proud" Swiss could now come together because "their democracy" stood tall.
It is tempting to dramatize Calonder's role, to present him as the man who rose to the occasion and dominated events. To do this, however, would be to misunderstand what he did and what the office allowed him to do -- the nature of the Swiss presidency. Calonder took advantage of the opportunities available, yes, and in that sense deserves much credit. But he could have done little or none of this without the backing of his fellow executives and most of parliament, including some who simply wanted the strike crushed and others whose sympathies were more leftist. It was the fact of a rough consensus by those groups that made his actions so powerful.
Was the Swiss presidency responsible for producing this consensus? One could hardly say it was the sole or primary cause. At the very least, though, the corporate executive did not prevent such a consensus from forming. Calonder had enough -tools to spur the system, particularly because he wisely mobilized the other arms of the government -- parliament and the council. The seven-member council is one of a number of republican features that cause a broad array of politicians, private institutions, and citizens to instinctively rally at such times of crisis.
Today this phenomenon is called a "culture of political consensus." It results, in a positive sense, from the referendum process, from decentralized decision-making, and other such practices. But in a negative way, the capacity is nourished by the lack of men or women of great charisma and sweeping powers. When the people rally behind such a government at such times, it is all the more powerful, for there is less manipulation and Caeserism than with other democracies, and more of spontaneous and broad-based popular initiative.
Switzerland recovered faster, and more solidly, from the war -- without the Versailles hangover that was to vex Germany and weaken France and Britain over the next generation. In Southern Germany, for example, the post-war strikes were one of a number of grievances against the economic dislocations aided and in some cases caused by Versailles. Thousands of young men, returning from the war to find the jobs all taken and their sacrifices in vain, took to political and paramilitary agitation as the logical solution -- burning with hatred for the conspiracy of Bolshevists, intellectuals, and Jews. One of the young men was a corporal and former Austrian living in Munich: Adolph Hitler.
In Switzerland, no such passions developed because the labor movement was confronted in an orderly, reasonable fashion -- and parts of its economic program adopted. As in 1848, the revolution seemed to come early to Switzerland, but was also dealt with more swiftly and more effectively.
In the long term, the council's handling of the national strike was the basis for a kind of concordat between labor and capital and management that has brought more than eighty years of harmony. Although there were signal advances in this harmony in 1947 and again in 1959, the national strike of 1918 and the reform legislation that followed were the starting point.
From 1918 through 1998, Switzerland suffered a total of less than 800 strikes with a total of 1.2 million man hours lost. On a per capita basis, this is less than one-fifth the average of the United States or Germany, and still smaller compared to Italy and Great Britain. Yet industrial wages -- whether in spite of or because of this labor harmony -- are the highest in the developed world.
The Depression speaks less clearly to the ability of Switzerland's executives to handle a crisis, but it is by no means entirely unfavorable. Every government in the world did something to try to combat the joblessness and lowered volume of production that seemed to afflict, at least in part, every developed economy in the world. Switzerland was no exception, with public works programs and a program of expanded training for workers in the trades. The Swiss effort was small potatoes -- the total of special public works and increases in transfer payments was less than one percent of gross national product -- compared to the ambitious New Deal in America, the socialist program in France, and the aggressive industrial subsidies in Italy and Nazi Germany. Officials also devalued the franc to put prices for Switzerland's key exports back on a par with international competitors. Thanks to a combination of labor discipline and skill in calculating the initial magnitude of the devaluation, the device seemed to work: Inflation blipped up by a few percentage points, but was acceptable, and employment remained strong.
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. This compares favorably to rates of 20 percent and more common in the industrial countries. Swiss output was flat for four years, but this compared to plunges of 10 percent per year or more in England, Germany, and the United States.
"Switzerland," as one economist observed, "never had the New Deal." If we remember that the New Deal was advanced as a practical stopgap measure, a way to "do something" rather than merely mouthing platitudes about supply and demand, then the relative Swiss torpidity can be seen as excusable, as the crisis never reached the dimensions it did elsewhere. Free-market economists would argue that the decision not to launch vast spending programs actually aided the country's economic recovery. At the worst, one can say that during economic crises in both 1918 and 1929-1933, Switzerland's diffused executive in no way hampered the government from taking steps that produced one of the most dynamic economies in the world during the pre-war 1930s.
"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?' The 'we' includes the president, but does not orbit about him in the way it does in the U.S. system." This is certainly visible in the domestic-economic crises that the institution has had to deal with.
Crises of a foreign or military nature offer perhaps more of an acid test of the executive's ability. In the case for the U.S. Constitution made in The Federalist, much effort goes into defending the power of the federal government and of the presidency in particular. Most of the arguments over the president's authority have to do with the necessity of having a unified command for dealing with foreign antagonists swiftly and, at times, secretly. Switzerland lacks America's size and its oceanic buffer from the European powers. Hence its need for such a president would appear even more acute.
Switzerland has not had its neutrality tested by full-scale war on its soil since the French occupation. At least several times, however, it faced imminent and substantial danger of an assault from the German army. These took place during the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II. In addition, Switzerland faced challenges to its territory or opportunities to regain territories that were taken from it wrongfully. These disputes centered on Neuchatel, the Valtellina, and the Savoy. Switzerland's record of achieving what might be called its objective in these crises, as Table 6.1 (on the next page) suggests, is mixed.
Switzerland's inability to regain territory it long held, and valued defensively, in Valtellina -- on the southern approaches to the Gotthard -- is not a light failing. Had the Swiss simply sent in a few troops, as they might have in 1813 as well, there would have been little European resistance. Switzerland had never ceded the justice of the area's seizure after the war against Napoleon; it had only prudently declined to start a war over the matter. The people of the district wished overwhelmingly to be reaffiliated with Switzerland.
Imagine that a critical piece of Ohio or New York -- say, the Hudson River approach to New York City or the railroads East of Chicago -- had been seized by a foreign power or proclaimed itself an independent kingdom. If after some years events forced the interloper to abandon his ridiculous claim and withdraw his forces, the U.S. would be expected to gather itself and reclaim what had always been rightfully its own. If it could not it would stand indicted for at least a certain lack of alertness. This may sound petty or even jingoistic, but we should consider that the U.S. Civil War was begun by just such a dispute, and over a smaller piece of property than the Valtellina: Fort Sumter. On the other hand, this is the extent of the flaw: That in this case the diffuse executive branch of the Swiss government was unable to move promptly in response to a legitimate opportunity. In the behavior of nations and their institutions, there are worse possible tendencies.
Prussia's threats over Neuchatel (1856-1857) and Bismarck's demand for the surrender of French troops (1870) are interesting because they predated a constitutional change in which the federal government consolidated more control over the Swiss military. One of the arguments in the constitutional debate of 1874 in favor of slightly increasing the power of the central government, and greatly consolidating the military, was the need to counteract the growing German threat to the North. Yet even before these fixes, the Swiss were able to resist German pressure. Swiss institutions may have played a role.
It may help to note that the Swiss have a time-honored method of preparing for war, one used more in anticipation of German aggression than for any other country: the election of a general-in-chief to command the armed forces. This is done for the simple practical reason that once war threatens there is a need to organize the Swiss military, consisting normally of some 200 to 300 officers, for a different sort of activity, and to rally the country behind a strong commander. 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, and one must be chosen to meet the crisis. Naturally, the Swiss method of appointing such a person is to hold an election; in this case, before parliament.
The point is not that this method necessarily produces the best military mind, or fails to. The important thing to notice is the drama of the event -- a kind of public sacrament in which the state, this most democratic of states, prepares for the ultimate act of statehood: the defense of the homeland. This ceremony, and the political act it represents, has an important impact on the ability of the Swiss to prepare for war with a ferocity that goes against some conceptions of neutrality.
In the Franco-Prussian War, the man chosen was Johannes Herzog of Aarau, the capital city of the canton of Aargau. Herzog was a participant in the SonderBund War and a trusted associate of the victorious General Dufour, who would later head the Red Cross. It was Herzog, of course, who had to prepare the army to repulse first a French incursion (or simply a disorganized retreat) while being ready, possibly within a few hours, to deal with the pursuing Germans. Herzog set the tough terms that probably helped save the French trom the tender mercies of Bismarck. No one who saw the thorough disarmament of the French could claim that Switzerland had violated its neutrality. And the British, not to mention the French and the Russians, were watching with concern to make sure the rising power of unified Germany did not get out of hand.
"The head of the Swiss army in wartime is a very powerful man," a former Swiss official who engaged in economic planning during the 1940s comments. Henri Guisan, the Swiss commander-in-chief during World War II, "had only to ask for materials and he had them." This was not because Guisan could legally compel compliance. Rather, the emergency itself provided the man in such a position with the authority he needs.
In effect, in time of war the Swiss elect a commander-in-chief, something closer to the American or European conception of a head of state, though still subordinate of course to the civil authorities. The man holding this position enjoys a tremendous prestige and, by virtue not of enumerated functions but of moral suasion, tremendous powers. As one of only four Swiss generals ever to serve, this commander immediately becomes a figure of history. His role and his function are precisely tailored to the emergency. He assumes his office on the day of his election, and he ceases to occupy it as soon as the crisis is over. Without intending to -- at least, there is no evidence of this intention either from the 1848 or 1874 constitutional debates -- the Swiss effectively created a way to have something like a presidential system, but only in times of need. To the extent that this device works, it enables the Swiss to enjoy the best of both worlds -- in times of peace, a weak executive, incapable of becoming a tyrant; in time of need, a strong leader.
The Swiss defensive efforts in World War II are discussed in a separate chapter in Switzerland's role in that war, which became the source of controversy in the late 1990s. For our discussion of the workability of the executive, it is enough to note that Switzerland's exertions were remarkable, and suggest no weakness of institutional capability. Well before most other countries had begun to act, Switzerland began a series of what are probably the most extensive series of hidden fortifications in the world. More important, perhaps, Guisan understood the need of military men, especially Swiss, to have a true sense of idealism about their duties. One of his first acts after his election was to gather his top officers on the Riitli to repeat the oath of 1291. At his urging, the federal council more than once issued a declaration of neutrality that was so tenacious one could easily mistake them for a declaration of war. The declarations proclaimed that Switzerland would never surrender its neutrality to "any" attacker -- there was only one real possibility -- and go to some length to assure the people that, even if Switzerland was attacked and they heard that a surrender had taken place, it could not be true. By foreclosing any surrender option, Guisan not only encouraged the Swiss public and soldiers to prepare for fierce battle; he also signaled the Germans that any attack would cost many lives and would never lead to the kind of easy capitulation seen in France, Czechoslovakia, and other victims of Nazism. Guisan thereby raised the cost the Germans perceived they would have to pay to occupy Switzerland -- and thus helped persuade even the mighty Wehrmacht that this was one country not worth attacking.
If the Swiss executive is highly flexible, of course, this is due not only to its own design but to other factors and institutions in the political culture. One is the nature of the army. Being a citizens' army, it reaches deep into the roots of the populace. Every third Swiss maintains a firearm at home, ready for duty in case of attack -- usually within twenty-four hours. This type of army is extremely tenacious and ready; as Machiavelli observed, the Swiss fight "like no army since that of the Roman Republic" when defending their home. Yet, it is instinctively defensive; hence, the Swiss response to opportunities in the mid-nineteenth century. Until the great engine for the defense of the country is engaged, Switzerland moves at the deliberate pace to which its republican institutions are suited.
Similar factors are at play with the Swiss presidency during peacetime. It might not be too much to say that the Swiss presidency could never function were it not for the support of a whole battery of other institutions, and popular habits of mind, that enable this counter-intuitive executive by committee to function. Among these are the weakness of the other branches of government and of government as a whole. Members of the parliament and the judiciary, as we will see, are not highly paid, have tiny staffs, and, while certainly respected, are without the semiroyal privileges that one sees for a United States Senator or Supreme Court Justice. Hence the Swiss executive, while seeming trivial compared to chief executives in America, France, or even Germany or Britain, is not nearly so overshadowed compared to Switzerland's people's parliament and its efficient but simple justices. Likewise, the decentralized nature of authority -- Switzerland's federalism -- means that a less potent executive is less necessary. Switzerland has no great bureaucracy to buck and kick against the policies desired by the government.
On the negative side, there is less potential for nuisance to attract the vain and the ambitious. "We do not have enough spoils," as a member of the Swiss civil service told me, "to have a 'spoils system.'" As well, of course, since the executive branch is always headed by seven persons from four very different parties, the opportunities for favoritism are even smaller.
A more positive way of viewing the interaction of Swiss federalism with its minimalist executive is to understand that in Switzerland federalism does not merely mean a division of power in which cantons or even communities enjoy significant sovereignty and responsibility. Swiss federalism stretches down to the individual who sits on the school board, or helps run the library -- largely volunteer activities in all but the largest Swiss communities. If we view the body politic as an actual body, this means that the muscles and the capillaries and the lungs of the Swiss system are constantly exercising and invigorating themselves. The Swiss executive draws on a more united, energetic body than other executives, whose people are less informed. The Swiss vote more, volunteer more -- in short, they govern more. Hence they are more fitted and ready to unite behind their chief executive, divided though it is politically, whenever the times demand. And since the greatest strength of modern democratic chief executives is to thus channel the people's vitality -- "to focus attention and set the agenda," as Doris Kearns Goodwin puts it -- the Swiss executive, in this sense, is one of the strongest in the world. When the executive -- or the parliament or the courts -- propose to act in accord with the popular wisdom, they automatically marshal an army of true citizens to their side, and can overwhelm any other branch that might oppose. (All the branches of the Swiss government are habituated to following the people's wisdom.)
Thus a more proper understanding of Swiss federalism lies in comparing not just the relative powers of the branches and levels of government in the abstract, but their capacity for action with popular support, popular indifference, and against popular opposition. With popular support, any branch of the Swiss government can accomplish nearly anything, for at every level there is the recourse to the ballot box. With popular opposition, almost nothing can be done. Only in the middle band, in the cases where the people are relatively indifferent, do the powers as such come very far into play, and in these cases by their very nature there is little need for a strong executive.
This combination has the additional benefit of rendering the Swiss relatively difficult to sway with sudden arguments, demagogic appeals, and slanted versions of the facts. Having never had a king or queen, they refuse to have a pseudo-king or Caesar to attempt to seduce or bully them. "Switzerland," as Lenin grumbled after living in the country for many years, "is the worst ground for the revolution."
Today, Switzerland faces no crises comparable to the Great Depression or World Wars. Paradoxically, however, many Swiss wonder if the institution of the corporate presidency may require mending.
The controversy over Switzerland's relations with Nazi Germany during World War II, for example, hit the Swiss hard. The Swiss were not prepared for the kind of international opprobrium heaped on them. Many Swiss still remember the sacrifices made during the war to keep Hitler out. When international press, and even the U.S. government, began focusing attention on dormant banking accounts, the Swiss wondered why no one mentioned the considerable resources they spent, and the dangers they accepted, in harboring more than 50,000 allied internees and nearly as many civilian refugees -- many of them Jews or resistance leaders -- from Germany, France, Poland, and elsewhere.
The Swiss wondered why their own government could not be more vigorous, in a double sense. First, why hadn't the authorities simply forced the Swiss banks to resolve the issue of the dormant accounts years ago? And second, why did its leaders seem powerless now to place Switzerland's sins of omission in context with her great humanitarian exertions? Naturally, much of this frustration found its object in the executive, particularly Flavio Cotti, now retired from the federal council, who served as president and foreign minister during the critical year of 1998.
In many ways, the Swiss had an easier time opposing Hitler than they do dealing with the Holocaust issue. Moral and physical threats cannot cow them; but confronting a complex series of factual issues, wrapped up in the bitterness and rage sewn by the Hitler genocide, are hard to come to grips with, let alone combat. This is a job for a national leader and communicator with both toughness and sensitivity, in the mold of a Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, and the Swiss model does not place politicians of this nature in the council.
Traveling in Switzerland in 1998 and 1999, an American was often engaged in discussions about the U.S. president. The Swiss were not much interested in Clinton's amours and other behavior per se\ much less so than Americans and most Europeans. They were intrigued by the response of our political institutions in launching the country's second impeachment trial in its history. And if they understood the idea of a free people having a king-like president in the abstract, they certainly had a hard time "feeling it in their bones."
This was brought home to me during a visit to the Ticino in early 1999, during the Senate impeachment debate. My train stopped at Bellinzona, where a beautiful castle, Castelgrande, nestled between the river and the grassy slopes and ridges along the southern Alps, virtually compelled me to stop.
Some men at a cafe up the street were drinking a delicious type of "Russian hot chocolate" with liquor in it and, being unusually expansive for Swiss, invited me to join. We quickly came to discuss my reason for being in the Ticino, and thence, politics. The eldest of the three men, clearly the sort of leader of the group and not by chance the best German speaker, held forth on various issues from the World War II controversy to the recent appearance of Herr Blocher, a parliamentarian who is, roughly, Switzerland's Pat Buchanan in ideological terms, though a more powerful figure for having been elected to office many times and having led successful efforts on a number of referenda.
Eventually, here in the heart of the world's oldest democracy, our discussion of the great issues moved to the Lewinsky affair. The other two men brightened considerably at the shift of the conversation, either because there were some proper nouns they recognized -- "Monica" was all one had to say in even the most remote village of Switzerland -- or because there was an opening to talk about sex; probably both.
After soliciting my prediction on the impeachment question -- which was that Clinton would not be thrown out of office -- the two men settled down into a discussion of their likes and dislikes for various American presidents. Kennedy, Reagan, and Carter were the popular figures.
During this part of the conversation, the older man seemed not to be listening. He was frowning and deliberating, as if thinking through something he wanted to say just right, or working out a math problem. Finally he looked up and raised his thick, Brezhnevian eyebrows and announced his findings: "Such a thing just would not be possible in Switzerland -- not even a part of it."
His companions looked at one another and me, a little confused. One of them took a drink from his mug and smiled, confident that there would be some punch line. The other one crossed himself -- it seemed to be a gently mocking indication that his older friend, the conclusion-drawer, was a fairly orthodox Catholic and was making a point about the state of morals. That was my thought, too -- especially from the earlier parts of the conversation, on the American television programming and its excesses, and from my rusty German, it seemed to me that he was trying to make a point about the sexual intrigue. It was either that "such a thing" wasn't possible because the Swiss had higher standards for their public officials, or that "such a thing" wasn't possible because there just wouldn't be such a fuss about consensual relationships.
Not sure what he was trying to say but not wanting to appear dense, the fellow next to me asked "why?" in Italian. The older gentleman smiled with satisfaction, as if having foreseen the query and, speaking to me in German, said "because so much power" could never be concentrated in one man. The Clinton-Lewinsky affair wasn't possible not only because a Swiss would probably not suffer from such hubris, but because the Swiss republic wouldn't place a man in a position to be so tempted by power. Nor would it have brought a young woman like Monica Lewinsky into the kind of hero worship that is made possible by such concentrations of power in one personality -- this was my thought, but it was in the spirit of what the old man was saying. He nodded. "Not even a part of it."
One of the colleagues joined in. "This castle," he said, gesturing at the massive and largely undisturbed Castelgrande, "is not the rule but the exception." And he was right, both in the narrow and the broader sense. 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.
"Not even a part of it," the old man smiled, and leaned back.
Indeed, from the time of President Clinton's 1998 denial (January) to admission (August) and impeachment vote in House (December) was virtually one year. That is a full term in office for the Swiss president.
The Swiss constitution makes no provision for impeachment procedures. It was not thought necessary. This is not because Swiss human nature is better than others, or that the Swiss vainly imagine it to be so. It is because the nature of the office is different -- less given to abuse in the first place, and more easily corrected when there is abuse.
It is difficult to picture this institution of a mixed presidency functioning in almost any place other than Switzerland. Therein may lie one index of just how successful its institutions are.
Note The Vorort was a precursor to the Swiss corporate presidency from 1848 to the present. The Vorort moved from city to city as the site of the Diet meetings, and hence the "capitol" of Switzerland itself moved. The Vorort was little more than a kind of secretariat to the Diet, though from time to time its members were able to distinguish themselves in diplomatic assignments. Among these was Charles Pictet de Rochemond, who helped negotiate European recognition of the value of Swiss neutrality at the Congress of Vienna.