Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.9
Referendum
"You don't believe in direct democracy unless you believe in it when you don't like the results." -- Andreas GrossReferenda came into widespread use during the French Revolution. These are not the most auspicious roots for a political device.1
The French held votes on taxes, church-run schools, and other issues in the 1790s, and these spread to Switzerland and other occupied territories in a sporadic fashion in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact, the French conducted a referendum on a proposed Swiss constitution in 1802. After it was voted down, Napoleon, who understood something of the special Swiss temperament, wisely drafted a substantially different "mediation" constitution of 1803, consulting personally with a number of Swiss to ensure its plausibility.
In the plebescites in Revolutionary France, votes often resembled those 98-1 or better affairs known in the North Korean legislature or the Cuban vote on Fidel Castro's newest five-year plan. Taken in the spur of the moment, with little real debate or presentation of alternatives, these plebescites revealed scarcely any of the deliberate sense of the people. They had all the seriousness and thoughtfulness of an opinion poll taken over the telephone, and gave to "plebiscitory democracy" the bad name it still has for many today.
In Switzerland, by contrast, even during the French occupation, matters were different. Though the French constitution was rejected, for example, the margin was not huge. This was an indication that to the voters, the constitution itself was not that bad. There was bound to be a certain rejection of anything French at that point; the interesting fact is that it was so small. Debate on issues in the characteristically incisive Swiss press was in many ways more lively than that tolerated within France itself. Not surprisingly the constitution, when imposed, did much better than the previous French efforts, largely by returning a measure of the country's customary decentralization.
Once ensconsed in the Swiss mind, the referendum proved a difficult habit to shake. It is a tool of government very much in the spirit of the country's tradition. Switzerland has always had referendum and initiative of a sort. Its community democracies allowed citizens to meet and make laws directly. Only the form of the referendum, which allowed voters over a wide area to participate by casting a ballot, was different than the ancient Landsgemeinde.
And the referendum was, in many ways, an improvement. Popular assemblies require the transportation of a number of people for an entire day; they are becoming logistically difficult to hold once a year even for the small cantons. A referendum ballot can be cast in a few minutes at polling places dispersed throughout the district for convenience. This becomes an important advantage if one needs to hold follow up votes or discussions, say if one method of dealing with a problem is rejected, but the people wish to consider others. Because of this advantage in holding discussions seriatim, separated by an interval of weeks or months, the referendum is more amenable to a deliberative process. Popular assemblies, by contrast, must be carefully managed to avoid becoming a chaotic shouting match. And if they are managed too carefully, they may stifle the very process of give and take by the people they are meant to spur.
The long occupation by France, followed by the imposition of the constitution of 1815 by Austria, Russia, and the other powers, had given the Swiss a bellyful of foreign influence. But there were benign, even positive aspects of the French influx as well. It spurred a desire for equality among the people -- and in Switzerland, with its traditions of self-reliance and economic opportunity, the emphasis was on legal and political equality, more than equality of economic result. Naturally the two intertwined and interrelated. The French occupation, and even its hated constitution, had proclaimed Switzerland "one Helvetic Republic." This had been the dream of classic liberal thinkers in Switzerland for some time. When the occupation ended, its imposition by the French did too, but the desire for a true Swiss nation did not.
When pressures such as these cannot be satisfied as to their direct object, they tend to move into secondary or "next-best" reforms. Like steam, they seek some crack through which to escape. In Switzerland in the 1820s, there was little hope of a Swiss nation, let alone a national political reform that would give the people direct and equal access to the law-making authority. At this time, the unicameral Diet still was merely a congress of cantons. Any ideas, any national reforms, had to pass through the sometimes undemocratic structures of the individual cantons to become law; and even then they would have only whatever force each canton decided to give them.
Naturally the reform forces turned, then, to the cantons. Some cantons were under no pressure, because the laws were already made directly by the people in assembly, such as Appenzell, Uri, Unterwalden, Glarus, and of course the ancient democracy of Schwyz. Others, though -- notably Bern, Zurich, Basel, and even Luzern -- had no such tradition, and their representative democracy still had a substantially feudal character, with a large number of seats on the ruling council passing down by family. In Zurich, for example, the people were represented, but through the ancient labor guilds, who had their quota of seats among the old families. Bern resisted democratization in the sixteenth century, acceded somewhat in the seventeenth, and attempted to revert in the eighteenth century, as did the independent state, now a canton, of Geneva.
In 1830, events across Europe gave the democracy movement in Switzerland an assist. Poland, Spain, and southern Germany were in turmoil, a foreshadowing perhaps of the deeper unrest to occur in 1848. In Zurich, Bern, Thurgau, Fribourg, Luzern, Ticino, and Vaud, popular gatherings demanded greater voting rights. In general the demonstrations were not violent. They were called Landsgemeinde and modeled after them -- political reformers cleverly simply convening these meetings to pass statutes that perhaps had no legal force, but had moral authority, and suggested the need for popular inclusion. Coinciding with the rewriting of many cantonal constitutions, the meetings had an impact. St. Gallen established a right for citizens to review and reject all laws in 1831. Zurich and Bern both not only opened up their council elections, but enacted a series of legal and political reforms that were approved in'consultative referenda from 1832 to 1834. Every canton but Fribourg had established some type of direct popular legislative review by 1845, at which point the onset of deep divisions over the religious question put such secular concerns on temporary hold.
As the procedure spread, it produced forebodings of doom among some. "We are governed no better and now no differently than the hill people," a Zurich patriarch moaned in 1836. James Fennimore Cooper visited Switzerland during this transition to cantonal referendum and reported on a heated discussion of the referendum's spread that took place in a Brienz pub: "An Englishman at a nearby table began to cry out against the growing democracy of the cantons... 'instead of one tyrant, they will now have many.'" Some of the shrewder members of the political class in the aristocratic cantons, however, saw the referendum as a co-opting device. Like some capitalists over Roosevelt's New Deal in economics, they may have calculated that a prudent concession to popular opinion was better than a revolution. Still others, of course, were staunch believers in the new creed. There was the peasant leader Joseph Leu of Luzern. An orthodox Catholic, Leu fought to have the Jesuits reinstated in the Luzern schools. But he also opposed the ruling families on political reform issues, and was a major force for the cantonal referendum.
Cantonal adoption of referendum was not enough to put to rest the feelings of religious enmity; no mere political device was enough for that. It was, however, available as soon as the SonderBund War ended -- as both a healing device and a means of establishing the legitimacy (or lack of it, if it failed) of the new constitution. Although there had been little experience with the device per se on a cantonal level, there was a consensus among the men writing the constitution in 1847 and 1848 that the referendum would prove a highly useful device for legitimizing their new structure of government -- and therefore, warranted to be retained as a permanent part of the design. Evidently, the people had little objection to being consulted about the constitution initially, or about its provision by which they would be consulted periodically.
On September 12, 1848, the Swiss voted on the new constitution with its referendum provision, 145,584 in favor, 54,320 against. It was, fittingly, the first national referendum as such by a sovereign Switzerland.
As the referendum was working its way through the cantons and up to the federal constitution, a related but separate concept began to take hold -- one perhaps even more important in its effects. This was the process of "initiative," by which citizens could bring their own proposals for new laws or constitutional provisions to a direct vote of the people. In canton Vaud (1845), any citizen obtaining 8,000 signatures on his proposal could put the matter to a referendum. From 1848 to 1860, the cantons of Geneva and Zurich added initiative. While the referendum offers the people an important veto on the acts of the legislature, the initiative allows them to force issues or ideas onto the agenda that their political elites might prefer to ignore. The one is a check and a brake; the other, a safety valve or a guarantee of access. Although this right was not in the federal constitution of 1848, the provisions for referendum were expanded in the new constitution of 1874. (This second vote followed rejection of a draft proposed in 1872 by foes of initiative and referendum.)
Finally in 1891, the right of initiative for changes to the federal constitution was approved by 60 percent of the voters and eighteen of the twenty-two (full) cantons. As a check against caprice, the constitutional referendum has always required approval by both the majority of the voters and a majority of the cantons.
At the federal level, there are three basic types of direct voting by the Swiss. This chapter does not label each one as such each time it discusses one or the other, but it is important to know that they exist and are distinct. As Wolf Linder defines these in Swiss Democracy:
First, all proposals for constitutional amendments and important international treaties are subject to an obligatory referendum. This requires a double majority of the Swiss people and the cantons.... Second, most parliamentary acts are subject to an optional referendum. In such cases a parliamentary decision becomes law unless 50,000 citizens, within 90 days, demand the holding of popular vote. [In this case] a simple majority of the people decides whether the bill is approved or rejected.... Since the obligatory referendum refers to constitutional amendments and the optional referendum to ordinary legislation, the two instruments are often distinguished as the "constitutional" referendum and the "legislative" referendum.... The popular initiative: 100,000 citizens can, by signing a formal proposition, demand a constitutional amendment as well as propose the alteration or removal of an existing provision. .. As with constitutional changes, acceptance requires majorities of both individual voters and the cantons. (Italics added.)Table 9.1 lists some of the more important uses of the referendum power by the Swiss over the last century and a half. This need hardly be reviewed line by line by the casual reader. It is worth skimming, however, for items of interest. The text that follows will refer back to items in the table and to other Swiss referendum votes.
Looking at this 150-year history, the most important characteristic is probably something one does not see. There does not appear to have been a single crise de regime caused by the initiative or referendum policy.
This is saying a great deal, because one can certainly point to cases where the device helped defuse or prevent a crisis. That there are sometimes advantages in the most democratic approach is clear from the very premises of democracy itself. The case against this has always been based on the idea that, as a practical matter, it would lead to disaster or, over the long term, decay. Yet in Switzerland, there seem to be no gross errors, no irresponsible flights into the risky or the insane.
Opponents of the process, such as the great Swiss statesman Alfred Escher, had predicted a proliferation of ill-advised schemes that seemed likely to help the common people, but that ultimately were based on fad, envy, or greed. Perhaps even worse, Escher feared that the system would be corruptive -- the process would become a cycle of passionate, demagogic appeals, fueling political extremism, and feeding back into still more extreme leadership. In these fears, Escher was solidly in line with the thinking of the Western political tradition, which from Plato to Rousseau feared democracy would end in envy by the poor, rule by the worst, and, ultimately, despotism. That pub Englishman who complained about Switzerland falling under "many dictators" anticipated by almost a half century an 1872 editorial in the Neue Ziircher Zeiting predicting a "tyranny of the many" or "dictatorship of the majority." This was exactly the possibility that American statesmen worked hard to prevent in setting up the U.S. Constitution of 1787. As a result, they carefully filtered any influence of public opinion through representatives and intermediary institutions, slowing it and making it more "deliberative" through the restraints of the constitution.
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 enters the EU, and the period of discussion and education that will go on will be beneficial to us. We will enter on much more solid ground than if we had not gone through this process, troublesome though it is to some." Whether the decision was wise or ill advised, however, it clearly was no Armageddon for the Swiss political economy. After an initial slump, the stock market and currency soared in the years following Swiss rejection of the proposal.
On foreign affairs, there has been a lively debate as well. Periodically the Swiss voter blocks the desire of its leaders to join an international organization (such as the United Nations) or take other actions that might incrementally impinge upon traditional Swiss neutrality. There is strong agreement among both leaders and the people that the neutrality policy is wise. But what does neutrality mean? Here there is much back and forth, as the Swiss sometimes choose to join in international organizations, and sometimes they do not. Even questions primarily "about" other subjects, such as environmental policy, often have reference back to neutrality.
Insofar as we can draw any general conclusions about the process and foreign policy, it is that the voters guard Swiss neutrality but are willing to allow for an activist version of it if they hear a sustained, intelligent case. Thus, over time, the voters acceded to Swiss entry into the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and various European economic organizations.
They may well someday join the emerging European state and the United Nations, but the people require more convincing.
Domestic policy reveals more of the tendencies of the referendum. It is also, numerically, the more common theatre of action for the referendum -- depending on how one classifies such matters as military service, domestic issues comprise about 85 percent to 95 percent of the material of popular votes since 1848. We can divide these still further into subject categories as follows:
- taxes and spending (about 20 percent of all Swiss domestic issues);
- other economic issues, e.g., central bank management, social welfare programs, and others (15 percent);
- political reform (about 20 percent -- the fairly well-tuned Swiss machine is constantly checking its own oil);
- procedural matters -- "the government may finance its capital budget over seventeen years instead of fifteen years," the cantons must provide environmental reviews -- (about 15 percent);
- social-moral issues such as abortion, the prohibition of absinthe, decriminalization of the Jesuit Order (15 percent); and
- eclectic matters, such as the vivisection of animals, or outlawing cars one Sunday of each month (10 to 15 percent).
On largely administrative issues, the Swiss have proven amenable, even facilitative. This becomes less so in proportion as any given proposal is seen as being not merely technical, but having broader implications. A good example would be initiatives regarding the military organization, male service, and other such matters. The Swiss have readily supported expansion of military capability when the country is under threat, as in the 1930s, and offered no resistance to increased drilling and other sacrifices during World War I and World War II. They have turned down a number of proposals for changes in military service, including some rather minor ones, however, apparently viewing this as a kind of moral issue and something sacred to Swiss citizenship. And they voted no on a proposal to weaken the facultative referendum during World War II -- as if aware that, while they would never stand in the way of a legitimate necessity, they nevertheless wanted their leaders to operate under the knowledge that arbitrary actions could still easily be challenged.
The referendum power is even, in a sense, self-denying. Far from grasping for power, the people have periodically denied it to themselves -- if, again, the matter is one they deem best handled by their politicians. In the 1960s, the Swiss even turned down efforts to require prior consent by referendum on nuclear weapons, and in the 1970s, rejected a similar proposal that would have made it easier to use the process to block highway construction projects. It is not that the Swiss, who are generally pro-environment, care nothing for the state of their roads or the communities they go through. Indeed, one of the major controversies in Switzerland in the 1990s concerned how to control the large, smoke trucks that pass through the country between Germany, France, Italy, and Mediterranean Europe. Rather, the Swiss have a capacity for self-denial and prudent forbearance, even where their own power is concerned.
This characteristic is, in part, especially Swiss -- tied up with the concept of neutrality, of a self-conscious inability to influence certain great affairs, and a positive desire not to try. The sensibility is also, however, the product of institutions. It can be imitated by others, and inculcated by the right set of political arrangements.
Always interesting, and in fact also instructive, are the somewhat off-beat proposals that occasionally come up for a vote. Most of these are placed on the ballot through the initiative process, which allows any citizen to bring a constitutional amendment before the country, provided he can collect sufficient signatures to show some serious level of support.2 Only rarely do such measures -- such as 1977's proposed prohibition of automobiles on the second Sunday of every month -- pass.
One is tempted to dismiss them as insignificant, and in direct legislative terms they are. They may also illustrate, however, that some of the system's most important impacts may be indirect or unseen. The power to bring a strongly felt proposal on to the national agenda, and have it debated in the press and voted on by the people, is an important one, and one the Swiss cherish. It defuses passions, and gives the angry and the enthusiastic an outlet for their energies. "Many of the people who worked on our initiative," as Andreas Gross put it, "became active in politics or in the society in other ways. Even though we were defeated, they were not alienated." A movement that has its measure rejected by Congress or vetoed by the president is likely to feel they were thwarted unfairly, that the will of the people was twisted by lobbyists and slick communicators. The Swiss whose initiative does not pass may feel some of this anger, but knows that his case has been judged directly by the people. He may feel he has helped educate the society, and probably has: All the articles about immigration policy in the Swiss press, while they have not enabled anti-immigration measures to pass, have provided information that the proponents are eager to see disseminated. The educational process works in both directions, too. Often the movements that propound radical ideas are able to refine or moderate their positions and become more effective. Politicians who misread the popular mood, meanwhile, can go back to their office and rethink their approach.
And those who persist in the process do frequently prevail. The "radical" cause of women's suffrage, rejected many times in Switzerland, did pass in 1971. Consumer protection legislation, defeated in 1955, became law several years later, and a significant extension of the legislation by parliament in the 1970s was ultimately approved when challenged by a facultative referendum.
The sheer volume of initiatives and referenda can tell us something about the state of Swiss affairs, and has offered information to all Swiss politicians who were intelligent enough to pay attention. In the 1970s, for instance, there was a sudden flurry of initiative making and referendum challenges -- more than triple the average number of votes seen in other decades of the twentieth century. Putting aside the substance and the results of all this activity, it certainly suggests a restlessness on the part of the people and a preoccupation to improve the performance of their institutions. The Swiss do not lightly rouse themselves to such activity; they are happy to pay the price of citizen's government, but not looking for needless opportunities to fill up their evenings with political meetings. A large number of the proposals were environmental in nature -- to block nuclear power, limit automobile emissions, and the like. Yet even though most of these were turned down, they helped produce policy changes in the 1980s that enacted some of the laws sought by the initial activists. Unable to persuade the people directly to adopt all their proposals, the environmentalists nevertheless generated a large discussion in the public and the press, and the parliament, reflecting this slow change in attitude, adjusted.
There are, finally, all the cases in which the initiatives and referendum process "created a law" without a specific referendum ever taking place. This happens when the politician in Bern, sensing popular concern and anticipating an initiative by the citizens, proposes and enacts a law addressing the problem before the initiative is necessary. Or when legislators, knowing a certain proposition they may admire will inevitably be overturned by a facultative referendum, vote against it themselves. This can happen in a purely representative democracy too, of course, but notice how the effect is stronger and more direct in the case of initiative and referendum. The member of Congress who casts an unpopular vote may jeopardize his own reelection, but of course the voters will render their judgment on that based on hundreds of votes. A Swiss parliamentarian likewise can vote for an unpopular measure out of personal conviction or misguided judgment, but he has even less incentive to, since the measure, if truly unpopular, will almost certainly be overturned. It is a much higher certainty than in systems where elites have greater discretion to substitute their own judgments.
In any of these cases there is no referendum to refer back to now. But it is certain that the referendum helped to produce the result -- may even be, in some cases, the immediate cause.
Taxes and central bank policy are the issues on which voters have proven most troublesome to their leaders through the referendum. Here, too, they might have done serious damage. The Swiss turned down tax increases in every decade of the twentieth century, and the referendum process directly, or by indirect pressure, helped bring about significant tax cuts in the 1920s, 1950s, and 1980s. Partly for this reason, Switzerland has developed a deserved reputation as a low-tax, low-spending country. This is generally true of its combined government budget, but is especially true of its central government, which consumes only 30 percent of government activity (the cantons, 40 percent, and the communes, 30 percent -- resulting in a 30-40-30 "formula" of the sort the Swiss cite often with satisfaction). The Swiss, as we will discuss in more detail, do not even have an agency that corresponds to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service -- and when measures even resembling them are proposed, they are soundly rejected at the ballot box.
On the other hand, the Swiss are not reflexively against all taxation or still less all government. At first skeptical about train travel, the Swiss today love their national train system -- and rightly regard it as a prudent investment that helped fuel the country's booming growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They eventually approved excise taxes on liquor and cigarettes that they at first turned down, although the final outcome was no doubt less than many politicians -- particularly of the center-left -- might have hoped for. Switzerland adapted itself to European protectionism in the 1920s and 1930s, though the Swiss raised tariffs later, and less, than other countries. The Swiss eventually adopted a payroll tax and an income tax, though they jealously watch to ensure that these are administered by the cantons and communes. And they allowed a Value-Added Tax on the fourth or fifth try -- but it is less than half the rest of Europe's.
"Switzerland grew out of a tax revolt, in part," as Senator Franz Muheim told me at a meeting across from the Luzern train station, "but it also grew out of that bridge that the people of Uri built and maintained with their own community effort." Such taxes, in fact, bought Uri's freedom. As this historical analogy might suggest, taxes have generally had a much better chance when they are linked to some project or benefit, either directly or as a general matter of need. The Swiss are not fond of spending merely for the sake of spending, however, and are especially tight-fisted about transfer payments and other programs not linked to production. By contrast they are more willing than other countries, as a share of what the government does, to commit resources to education, transportation projects, and other goods perceived as stimulating production or efficiency, or aiding the community generally, or both. In part, the Swiss are merely fortunate in being able to devote themselves to such projects, and reject programs that merely pass around money and the taxes needed to fund them. They suffer few extremes of poverty or wealth, and in the general condition of rough equality that results, have less need for such palliatives. To an extent, however, the shape of the Swiss fiscal picture is creditable to intelligent choices by the Swiss. The initiative and referendum process made a contribution to this, both as a general matter and in the visible ways in which certain programs were adapted.
For example, the Swiss turned down a proposal to move back the retirement age to fifty-eight and sixty-two -- an attractive-looking proposal at the time, but one whose rejection now appears quite shrewd as aging populations stress other government pension systems throughout Western Europe, and are literally crippling the economies of Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the rest of the former Soviet bloc. The Swiss have also maintained lower income and consumption tax rates than the rest of Europe, helping them to continue to attract many of the most enterprising minds of science, finance, and manufacturing. Direct democracy is the greatest single cause of these economic policies that have helped Switzerland grow so rapidly over the last century.
Switzerland's affection for taxes is nearly matched by its love for a powerful, unaccountable central bank. On at least six occasions they rejected government proposals for central bank management. Yet this tendency seems to have done no harm, and arguably has done good. Twice in the nineteenth century (1876 and 1880), the Swiss refused to even allow the central government a monopoly on bank notes. When a third effort was started in parliament in 1887, signatures for a facultative challenge gathered so fast that the effort was dropped. The political leadership finally drafted a proposal that made sense to the electorate, and in 1891 a more limited authority was granted than existed in the United States or most of Europe. In 1897, the proposal was approved and the government had the authority to set up a central bank. But it was still another decade (1907) until a workable design could be found that was not threatened by immediate rejection by the voters.
When the national bank was created, it was one of the "weakest" such structures in the developed world. Even today the National Bank's role is strictly limited to monetary policy. The bank is a private entity legally, with a small staff and limited powers. A majority of the bank's stock is held by the cantons, the cantonal banks, and some several dozen other public bodies and institutions. In the early twentieth century the Swiss turned down one proposal to allow the bank greater latitude in conducting open-market operations. Other ideas were stillborn in parliament when the representatives considered how chary the voters had been in earlier bank votes. Their denial of this flexibility, coupled with Switzerland's low-deficit fiscal situation, may have helped soften the Great Depression, which in Switzerland was a blip of unemployment that never topped 5 percent, and a "growth recession" in which output did not decline, but expanded only 1 percent cumulatively from 1930 to 1934.
In 1949, frustrated by the government's failure to "get with" the emerging monetary order, voters resoundingly rejected another proposed change in the national bank. The result was something of a crisis, but forced the government to revise its financial austerity package into a growth initiative built around postwar tax relief, monetary stabilization, and public works programs such as road construction. The combination helped pull Switzerland out of the European malaise of the early postwar years.3
Again in 1961, the appreciation of several European currencies threatened Switzerland's monetary order. The government floated the currency and, after a long struggle, redesigned the bank. Most leaders of industry consider the design of the Swiss central bank to be a major asset, and that design is in no small way attributable to what one Swiss investor calls "the people's wonderful stubbornness on financial issues." Over the last 150 years, the Swiss have been less troubled by the wild swings of inflation and deflation seen in the world at large than almost any other country -- even including the United States.
The experience with issues of banking and taxation illustrates some important points about the referendum process itself, especially as it has evolved into something of an art form over long experience.
The first is that the process itself has become deliberative. The effort by political leaders to secure arrangements for a central bank, or funding for desired projects, became an ongoing conversation. Political leaders first press one way, and then, finding there is insufficient support for a particular conception, they lead in another. The Swiss have seen this process in recent years regarding the debate over entry into the European Union: Proponents have had to rethink their arguments and their premises, and adjust their proposals and policies, in order to persuade the voters. In this, they naturally confer and deliberate among themselves, too, though with the people constantly in mind. Thus the process of establishing a national bank became a forty-year dialogue, and the value-added tax, one of almost twenty-five years.
This is in marked contrast with traditional Western thought about the strengths and weaknesses of popular legislation. During the debates over the American Constitution, one of the advantages proposed for America's legislative system, in contrast to the more direct democracies of classical Greece, was the idea that a body of lawmakers would be able to consult, think, and craft the laws -- to become a skilled profession, of sorts, and to be removed, at least to arm's length, from the passions of the people. Proposals would benefit from having been forged, refined, and crafted over time. Indeed the framers were so concerned about the popular whim that they feared the "rashness" of even representative assemblies (Federalist 63). One of the main arguments for the Senate was that this more senior body would impose something of a check on the possibly unruly House. The presidential veto, in turn, was set atop of both houses, and provided a still further check. Many hurdles were set up in order to filter public opinion through experts and seasoned officials, and to stretch the process out so that decisions would reflect the "deliberate sense" of the country, rather than mere waves of passion.
In Switzerland, though, direct democracy turns out to be significantly deliberative. "In our system," as federal counselor and 1999 President Ruth Dreifuss explained to a foreign journalist asking about the process of Swiss entry into the EU, "things take time." Indeed, the most common complaint about the system, as it has actually operated, is that the Swiss referendum process slows things down too greatly. The people turn matters over and become part of a legislative process -- especially when, as in Switzerland, they are placed in a position where they are, in effect, lawmakers.
This raises a second point about the Swiss system and about popular politics generally. The people's opinion on a given matter, requested under one set of conditions, is not necessarily the same as their opinion on the same matter, but under different conditions. A system of referendum does not yield the same results one would have if one polled the people about the issues on the referenda -- because when someone knows he is going to be asked to render an opinion, and that opinion will become law, he treats the matter more seriously. This does not mean that public opinion polls are wrong, or meaningless -- it just means that they measure, normally quite accurately, something that may differ significantly over time or over different conditions. Nor are the people fickle in this, any more than water is capricious because it is a fluid at one temperature and a solid at another. They are, in fact, wise, economizing on their need for information and thought about subjects depending on whether their opinion will have some tangible influence. Members of a jury treat a case differently than members of the general public, and by the same token, voters and lawmakers regard it otherwise than if they were mere bystanders.
In the Swiss case, this differential is more important, but less observable, because the people are now long accustomed to being lawmakers. It is probably one reason, for example, that the Swiss are voracious readers of newspapers and that their newspapers, in turn, offer some of the most serious coverage of political policies and issues in the West.
A good illustration of these tendencies, in both Switzerland and the United States, is the sensitive issue of immigration. Like the U.S., Switzerland plays home to a large number of foreign-born workers and their families -- close to 20 percent of the population for the Swiss. In a country already trying to assimilate three major languages across mountain ranges, this is a significant tax on Swiss resources and patience. One frequently hears complaints by the Swiss about the immigrant population, and it is one of the most frequent subjects for comment in the graffiti in the train stations and on the streets. (Switzerland, a generally orderly and one might even say extremely tidy country, has as much or more graffiti than any other country in Western Europe; it is close in most cities to New York City standards. The graffiti about foreigners, as one might expect, is especially unkind.) Public opinion polls, though taken much less seriously in Switzerland, indicate that by margins of about three to one the Swiss feel there are too many foreigners, they cannot be assimilated, and something should be done about it.
Yet when confronted with the chance to reduce immigration through policy, Swiss voters have consistently rejected the proposals -- and by large margins.
Anti-immigration measures failed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These measures were well financed by supporters and most of them were not extreme by comparative standards. That is to say, if passed, they would not have moved Switzerland to the bottom or even the middle of Europe in terms of accepting immigrants; they would only have reduced the country's lead, in percentage terms, of acting as a home to the foreign born.
The sole victory by the anti-immigration forces was their defeat, albeit also by a large margin, of a 1981 initiative proposing to significantly liberalize immigration. The measure, however, would have had as large or larger an impact on the composition and incentives of immigrants as on their numbers: For example, it reduced requirements for work, and increased the availability of welfare and other services. Thus even many advocates of increased immigration levels were lukewarm or opposed to the proposal.
The persistence of this dichotomy suggests that the Swiss voter is not behaving in a fickle manner. There is no swing from one attitude to another, but rather, a steady pattern: Swiss attitudes on immigration are fundamentally negative; Swiss votes on immigration policy are fundamentally liberal.
(One finds a similar dichotomy on immigration in the United States, although, since there is no national referendum or initiative, it is more subtle and difficult to read. Voters answer polls negatively about immigration generally. But in large numbers, Americans support the admission of immigrants who are highly skilled, or who will take jobs that Americans won't, or who are reuniting with families. Since these groups comprise about 90 percent of immigrants, there is latent support for a liberal policy. In numerous congressional votes over recent decades, proponents of high levels of immigration held their own, and politicians who ran on broad antiforeign themes fared poorly: Richard Gephardt, John Connally, Ross Perot, George Wallace, and Patrick Buchanan all garnered a few primary victories, or made it close to 10 percent of the popular vote, but did no more. The only major immigration referendum in the United States, in the state of California, was passed, and was described as a major setback for immigration nationally. It was politically, perhaps, but the measure had no direct application to the number of immigrants accepted, a federal concern. Rather, Californians voted to reduce welfare and other services offered to legal and in some cases illegal immigrants. One can argue the fairness of such measures, as one can make a case for them on incentives grounds. They do not, however, constitute a direct vote for lower immigration levels, any more than requiring cars on the street to drive on the right side is "antitraffic.")
The effects of the Swiss system appear to be somewhat different from the process of initiative and referendum in various states in the United States. Several other factors, of course, are different as well -- the party structure, the political system, and others. And it is difficult to say which of these differences are causes, and which are effects. On the whole, however, the initiative and referendum process in the state of California -- familiar to me from having lived there for some six years -- is somewhat less deliberative, and more impulsive, than in Switzerland. Part of this is due to the difference in the political party structure and tone. In the U.S., since there is no national initiative or referendum and since there are two dominant parties, it is much easier to bottle up issues or proposals for years. They can still be forced out by a well-timed referendum or initiative. Proposition 13 in 1978, for instance, put the idea of tax reduction on the national agenda. But the process is more problematic. In addition, the whole tone of discourse on political issues is more divisive in the U.S. than in Switzerland, and in particular the motives of parties much more likely to be impugned than in Switzerland. When groups lose or win a struggle in a particular state, they are much more inclined to merely resume the battle elsewhere, and their politicians, being more of a professional class than mere citizens who happen to volunteer services to the government, view the struggle as a war that must be fought and won.
There are other technical factors as well. The courts in the United States are more powerful and more inclined to throw out the results even of a popular vote, than in Switzerland. In California and Massachusetts, referendum results have been disallowed frequently by judges after the fact, or their placement on the ballot made difficult by arbitrary signature requirements (i.e., if there is one smudge on a sheet of paper with thirty signatures, all the signatures are invalid). This makes the process, like the parties and the power structure, less direct and certain in its impacts, and hence, turns the referendum and initiative into more of an extension of politics as usual than a reliable process for making the voice of the people felt. As well, while California and many states have both initiative and referendum provisions, there are few referenda as such, and none required. The process is certainly less regular than in the Swiss cantons, in some of which every significant law must be approved by the people. This has the effect of rendering the process more exceptional.
Because of many stages and iterations in Switzerland, the referendum process is not one shot -- it's more deliberative and seriatim. The Swiss referendum process is more like the legislative process in the U.S. The American initiative and referendum process sometimes can become more drawn out and deliberative, but, for other reasons, it has tended not to be. In addition to those already mentioned, the sheer expense of collecting signatures in California, and the large amounts of money spent on demagogic appeals -- which the voters, being less trained as legislators than the Swiss, are more susceptible to -- has rendered the process more like what the American founders feared for direct democracy, than it is like the Swiss alternative.
Overall, direct democracy infuses and pervades Swiss institutions through all levels of government; in the United States, direct democracy has been an occasional tool used in some places in limited fashion. The U.S. system might be called a "weekend athlete" who, while not necessarily being fat, does not train regularly and has not honed his or her skills to their potential. The Swiss are direct democracy professionals, working out regularly. The typical Swiss citizen votes on a constitutional amendment about once a year, and votes several times on cantonal laws, initiatives, and amendments. He takes public issues seriously as issues; like a mini-legislator, he will have to "vote" meaningfully on their resolution.
The communications class -- politicians, press, business leaders -- take the importance of the people into account in everything they do. An American friend of mine who complains frequently about the massive efforts made to "lobby" members of Congress in Washington, D.C., asked me after a visit to Switzerland what possible difference it would make if the United States were to have an initiative and referendum process similar to Switzerland's. My response was that there would probably be, to her disappointment, as much or more lobbying as a matter of volume -- but that a much greater amount of it would be directed at the people. "Imagine if all the effort and money spent in Washington went towards educating people -- and listening to them." She agreed that this would be a substantial change.
The use of direct democracy with this frequency and at this level of importance creates the effect, almost, of a different system of government. There is far less difference between Switzerland and the United States than there is between the United States and, say, one of the Arab countries or the authoritarian government of Indonesia. But if we were to take a constitutional monarchy, such as Britain's, from the nineteenth or even eighteenth century, with an elected legislature, it is arguable that the U.S. democracy of today is closer to it, institutionally and certainly in spirit, than it is to democracy in Switzerland. When an American visitor to Switzerland told his hosts in 1999, "You have a democracy; we do not," he went too far. It might not be saying too much, however, that these two types of democracy are so different they might be classified as separate species with certain common ancestors and ideas.
Some of the disadvantages of the referendum system are peculiar to Switzerland: For example, the diversity of language sometimes yields drafting imprecisions in the wording of laws and resolutions, and renders political debate and discussion more difficult as well. There are other disadvantages to it, however, that while felt in Switzerland, might be even more acute for the United States and other powerful republics.
Critics of the system of direct voting generally fall into one of two categories.
One group consists of those who don't like the results of direct democracy. This is seen in representative elections too, of course: It is tough to see your ideas lose, particularly when votes are close. In the Swiss system, given that the voters have demonstrated a certain eclecticism and balance in their actions -- supporting some government programs, opposing others; keeping out of some international organizations, but supporting some as well -- most groups have suffered enough defeats, but also won enough victories so that the "losers" don't comprise a consistent or solid ideological bloc. Business interests, for example, have lost many votes on environmental policy, but have won others on taxes. The left has been unable to push certain spending schemes, but has enjoyed victories on pension and health care policies.
This does not mean, however, that such groups might not form, or have not partially formed already -- creating a potential threat to the system by fostering a small, but hard-core lobby, dedicated to incessantly seeking opportunities to overturn the system so it can finally win passage of a particular economic or social agenda. One such group would be the Swiss, including centrists in the government and members of the manufacturing and other non-banking sectors, who are keen to have Switzerland join the European Union. Many of those who favor such policies -- indeed the majority -- nevertheless are willing to hew to the long and patient task of winning a majority of the Swiss over to their point of view. But there is a quiet resentment of some of the elite that this is a necessity, and that, of course, it could be that they will never win popular support for their policies despite their best efforts to explain why they are right. This sociological effect -- the feeling of superiority and condescension by some Swiss elites -- could be important in the long run. If direct democracy is ever to be overturned, it might well be that it happens as a result of a long, concerted effort by embittered business, political, or other elites.
A related group would be critics of the regime in accord over Switzerland's role in World War II -- those who want to see further apologies, and payment of reparations by the Swiss, or, in some cases, demand that banking privacy and Swiss neutrality be done away with altogether. But again, even these critics, who often smolder with resentment over the stubborn resistance of the Swiss to clamor to their view of the war and related issues, are of mixed minds when it comes to direct democracy itself. When I visited one such critic, Jean Ziegler, in his office at the University of Geneva, I expected to hear a jihad against the direct democracy. Ziegler's assessment was that his proposal for a Swiss apology for the country's part in World War II would lose about 90-10 in a national referendum. Yet he does not propose to overturn the system as such. "There has to be a way to persuade people," he says, confidently. Others in Ziegler's circle, of course, may not take such a patient, long-run view. For the most part, however, it is notable that even many of those who find much of Switzerland corrupt -- "like a girl who works in a whore house, but wants to remain a virgin," in the words of Ziegler's The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead -- accept the discipline of direct democracy, which forces them to treat each Swiss man and woman as their equal. "Change of the kind we are looking for takes time," Ziegler comments.
A second type of critic is more philosophical. One of the more serious is Beat Kappeler, a long-time labor union leader, and now an editor for the weekly journal Weltwoche. Kappeler's arguments for an adjustment in the Swiss system are varied, and his manner smooth and polished. Seemingly superior, on the one hand -- he decries the notion that the system encourages voter study of the issues as "the ill-informed myth about well-informed Swiss voters" -- he is, nevertheless, anything but an elitist. Kappeler recalls how, as a prominent labor leader, he eschewed first class on the Swiss trains in favor of second-class section. "It wasn't out of economic reasons, although it saves a little money," he concedes. "It's the fact that elites who travel in first class feel free to interrupt you and barge right in on you. People in second class leave you alone."
As theories of representative democracy are likely to be in the future, Kappeler is especially critical of the impact of direct democracy on legislators and the legislative process. In a short but cogent book, Regieren statt revidieren, he lays out the case that initiative and referendum have weakened the Swiss parliament and hampered it from making tough choices and providing meaningful leadership. (Weltwoche, Zurich, 1996.)
The weaker of Kappeler's two main criticisms is that direct democracy has perverted the legislative process by placing it at the mercy of special interest groups and well-heeled lobbies, who can "block almost anything" early in the process. Switzerland certainly has pressure groups, but how do they compare with other.countries?
"We have lobbies, but they are not anything like the full-time armies you see in Washington," comments Casper Selg, host of the German-language news broadcast on Swiss public radio and a former correspondent in Washington, DC. "UBS does not have 10 or 20 full time staff working in Bern." Another correspondent, Swiss television's Hans Barenberger, is likewise an experienced reporter in Bern. "Lobbying hasn't really become a profession the way it has in Washington and other capitals," he notes. "There are some hired guns, but I don't think I could name more than two or three. There are pressure groups and the parties, but these don't seem to be stronger than elsewhere, and I would guess they are weaker."
At the least, the referendum and initiative process provides a check on these groups. If Kappeler doesn't like their influence, why doesn't he challenge laws, or propose new ones through the referendum? Kappeler's answer, and it is a fair point, is that this tool, while always present in theory, cannot always be used in practical terms after the long period of building a complicated set of policies or interconnected programs. The voters in Switzerland do rely on legislative expertise, and do tend to give their elites the benefit of the doubt -- approving the vast majority of laws passed by parliament that are challenged.
As well, Kappeler argues, money plays an unhealthy role in the referendum process itself. Often One side outspends the other by a factor of 5-1, 10-1, and more, and the record of success by groups at the low end of that figure is not long. It is not, however, non-existent. When Kappeler met with me at the Bern train station, a national vote by the Swiss on reform of the military was only a few days off. Powerful forces, led by Christoph Blocher on the right and the Green Party on the left, were opposing a proposal to allow Swiss forces who volunteer to go abroad to carry arms.
Having watched Blocher's fund-raising efforts, and a sophisticated media campaign to accompany it, along with what he called the "very poor" effort of the government to rally support for its own proposal, Kappeler's assessment was that the opposition was likely to win. I ventured the opinion, taken from Jeff Greenfield's concept of "political jujitsu," that the very fact that the opposition had so much money was being turned into an issue by the government. It also seemed to me that the federal council, in particular President Moritz Leuenberger, had in fact waged a reasonably skillful counter-effort, and would probably pull out a win. My guess turned out to be right in this case, though the win was only by a slim 51-49 margin. Nevertheless, the result suggested that money, in referendum politics as in other votes, can be a two-edged sword.
Kappeler's second argument, that direct democracy tends to produce a weaker brand of leadership, is more difficult to deny. This has been observed in the U.S., for example, in the state of California, where governors and legislators have often seemed ineffectual, dating back to the populist uprising that took place in the state during the 1978 Proposition 13 tax cut.
"We don't have a government," Kappeler argues. "We have a toy government." Most members of the Swiss executive, let alone ordinary members of parliament, have little experience and no competence, in Kappeler's eyes -- let alone strength, or polish. "It is not quaint any more," he adds with a smile.
In making this point, however, Kappeler and the defenders of direct democracy find themselves in rough agreement. Both he and the system's supporters find that the referendum system tends to produce a less agile, less polished, less independent legislature and executive than would otherwise be the case. Kappeler believes this to be a political ill. Supporters believe it is a political good. At least, they share the same assessment of its impact.
Even enthusiastic Swiss are sometimes weary of their democracy -- and the referendum system is a partial cause of this. Turnout levels in Switzerland have reached U.S.-like levels of 50 to 60 percent in national elections and 30 to 40 percent in cantonal elections. It is, in fact, work. "You must remember, we have to vote three or four times a year, sometimes more," as the late Dr. Paul Jolles, the former Swiss Secretary of State, put it. "Some people are tired of it. That is the price of citizenship -- it is work sometimes."
This phenomenon is not to be overstated, however, especially in comparison to other affluent societies. The Swiss are uniquely proud of their political system, as survey data show, and as American sociologist Carol Schmid, cited previously, has demonstrated in depth. If the burden placed on the Swiss citizen is high, it is also true that his capacity for bearing such burdens appears to be high as well, provided that they are the reasonable duties of citizens. Their weariness is that of some Americans when called for jury duty. If they are busy people, there is a certain natural reluctance to have to spend days or weeks at a trial. But if they are patriots, they are willing to do so, and may even wax nostalgic about this exercise of a right their forefathers fought and died for.
This drawback, the desire to be less involved in the details, is merely the unavoidable flip side of one of the system's striking advantages -- its precision. The Swiss system of citizen legislation facilitates a much quicker and more accurate matching of public policy to the will of the electorate. The difference between it and purely representative democracy is illustrated if we imagine a system in which you could pick only which grocery store someone else would shop at for you -- or, still further, if you could select between three or four carts that had been previously filled by people at the store, but could not stock the carts yourself. It is possible, particularly if leaders are respectful of the popular will, to communicate what groceries you want to the cart fillers. Over time, you might find one of them consistently putting eggs into the cart. But even if he did, he might also tend to purchase $20 worth of Spam, which you don't want, or to buy 2 percent milk instead of your preference, skimmed. There would only be very rough approximations of your desires, though. And in a system of representative elections, remember, the voters are only able to communicate with the "cart stockers" once every few years and when they do, rather than giving elaborate instructions they vote yes or no for one of them, accepting all the choices they didn't like in the bargain.
Imagine if, after acclimating yourself to this system, you were suddenly allowed to make periodic trips to the grocery store yourself, and pick out your own items. You would have an immense feeling of relief as you knew that, from time to time, you could take care of some of the neglected items. Sophisticated grocery stores would watch carefully to see what you picked out when you had a chance, and use this as a signal to improve their own purchases. In thinking about the Swiss system, and watching it in action, one feels something of the sense of exhilaration that that shopper would feel. It is far from perfect, and there are many mistakes made. But the mistakes you make are yours. It is a gulp of oxygen; a sip of undiluted democratic spring water.
Professor Wolf Linder of the University of Bern, a leading analyst of the referendum and initiative process in Switzerland, offers a contrasting metaphor. "I think it is true, and a good image, that direct democracy is, in a sense, much like this grocery store," he suggests. "But we might say that representative democracy presents a different image, and it has some advantages.
"Suppose you would like to buy a computer. You face many different choices, and you know there are many good models, but you want to get one that is right for you, and at a decent price. What do you do? You have a nephew that knows a lot about computers, so you ask him to help you. You tell him what you want -- 'I want a computer that does this, and this; I don't care about a lot of storage, but I want a fast model,' and so on. He then knows what you want, but he also knows about the different computers that can do this.
"So he selects the model for you. He is, in effect, your representative."
This is a just and persuasive summary of the representative model. It relies, of course, on the same kind of hybrid as my own image of the grocery store does -- combining politics on the one hand with consumer choices in a market on the other hand. In politics, of course, even democratic politics, we cannot each select our own nephew to buy the particular type of government we want. Rather, say in a town of 10,000 people, all of us select one person to buy a computer for all 10,000 of us -- a loss of intimacy and of control on our part. Furthermore, in a real-life grocery store, there are, in fact, elements of representative government. We rely on the grocer to select various items to put on the shelf for us, and a whole range of government inspectors and regulators to make sure -- hopefully -- that the food we buy is accurately labeled, properly handled, and safe.
Nor can we all go to the grocery store and buy whatever we want, individually, you selecting snow peas and your neighbor preferring corn on the cob. However many choices there are before a law is made, once it is made, it is the law -- for all of us. Jude cannot pay taxes under one code, while Jeff pays taxes under another. So, to the extent that either image relies on the desirability of making individual choices, they somewhat miss the mark.
Even so, on the central matter that is being compared, the two illustrations are illuminating. Representative government, to an extent, relies on expertise of someone -- your nephew, a consultant, your congressman -- to make decisions for us. Direct democracy, to a greater extent, lets us make choices more directly, with less intervention by experts. In the case of initiative, it even enables us to "place an item on the shelf' that the store manager, or our nephew the computer nerd, has declined to do, whether out of stubbornness or ignorance or because they simply aren't hearing us very well. This advantage may be less or more acute depending on many other factors. For example, in many countries, multiparty systems create opportunities for voters to choose their representatives, at least to select between several different models. In the United States, a strong and somewhat exclusive two-party system means that in most cases, the choice comes down to brand X and brand Y
These illustrations also remind us that neither Switzerland, the United States, nor any other modern democracy we see today is purely "representative" or "direct." The systems we observe, and are likely to observe, are mixed regimes. They vary in degree, more than in kind. Still, most of the world at present tends to lean far more toward the representative model. And Switzer-land uses the instrument of direct democracy more extensively, indeed far more extensively, than the others. Anyone who wants to know what European or U.S. politics would be like if direct democracy were employed more extensively will surely wish to study this convenient political and social test case.
Whether such a system is suitable for other countries or not, the Swiss use of this device, over a substantial period, is a valuable departure. Other democracies rely almost exclusively on representative methods of securing popular consent. The Swiss alone have taken this more direct route. This is not to say that the other democracies are wrong. The fact that Switzerland is virtually alone suggests prudence may argue against its innovation. It is, at the least, something different.
If we glance at how the initiative and referendum process has performed, now a 150-year experience, several patterns become readily apparent.
Even those who are skeptics of the benefits of referendum, of whom there are few, concede it has committed few if any drastic wrongs. The most common complaint against it among the small number of critics is that having worked well, it is now "out of date" because it hampers entry into the European Union and other desirable outcomes. (And many of the staunch advocates of full EU entry, which the Swiss have declined for the present, say that the referendum process would need only adjustment for that end, along the lines of the Swiss entry into the League of Nations, and not a complete overhaul. That is a separate debate.)
In short, if the general presumption is in favor of the most direct means of popular control, subject only to checks on the people as might seem necessary, the Swiss experience seems to suggest the need for such limits is small indeed. We may conclude with Viscount Bryce that the Swiss have used their power of initiative and referendum "responsibly and well," and certainly without gross disaster or inconvenience. Having asked dozens of Swiss what the worst result initiative or referendum has produced, most of them answered "none" if the question meant has there been a single grave error or result. The respondent will then point to a particular referendum he or she did not agree with -- but will hasten to add that this is only their personal opinion.
Importantly, when commenting about "mistakes" by the voters, most add one of the following two points -- or both. First, nearly all will say that the result "is not final" -- that if they and others who agree with them are right and can marshal the facts, the public, being reasonable and indeed astute, will eventually agree with them. Second, many -- especially politicians, such as Mr. Loeb, Mr. Gross, others -- will have come to the conclusion that because the people disagreed, their own initial opinion must have been wrong. So far from feeling any contempt for their fellow citizens as ill informed, the Swiss -- even the most brilliant -- regard the voters as a standard of judgment, more than an object. In most countries, as the former economic and political guru to Jack Kemp, Jude Wanniski, has observed, the voters as a whole are smarter than their leaders. The difference may be that, in Switzerland, most leaders believe the people are smarter.
As a result, there is perhaps less of a gap between elite and popular opinion in Switzerland than in any other country. There is, when such gaps occur, less arrogance felt by the elites and less frustration by the people than perhaps mankind has ever seen over an extended time under any other political system. The chief institutional sources of this distinctive level of mutual respect, in my observation, is the federal and cantonal initiative and referendum process, and community democracy.
Notes 1. The history of the instmment and the term are under debate. A case can be made that the word itself derives from a practice in the Swiss Diet, predating the French Revolution, of "referring" questions back to the cantons. A number of cantonal constitutions required this (as did the colony of New York in the U.S. Continental Congress). But there are many acts of "referring" questions to other branches and authorities in politics. In the Swiss case, some of these referrals might issue forth in a popular assembly; others would not.
2. The level as of this writing was 100,000 signatures within an eighteen-month period, though there is discussion of raising these and other signature requirements to reflect growth in the population and the size of the voting public since those levels were established.
3. Gregory Fossedal, Richard Holbrooke, and Paul Nitze, "How the Marshall Plan Worked," Research Report 05-997-02, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, June 5, 1997; and Gregory Fossedal and Richard Holbrooke, "Will Clayton's Genius," Houston Chronicle, 2 June 1997.