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7 - Switzerland: the marriage of direct democracy and federalism
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- By Herbert Obinger, Assistant Professor Centre for Social Policy Research, University of Bremen, Germany, Klaus Armingeon, Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science, University of Bern, Switzerland, Giuliano Bonoli, Assistant Professor Department of Social Work and Social Policy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Fabio Bertozzi, Research Associate Department of Social Work and Social Policy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
- Edited by Herbert Obinger, Universität Bremen, Stephan Leibfried, Universität Bremen, Francis G. Castles, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- Federalism and the Welfare State
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 02 June 2005, pp 263-304
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Introduction
Swiss federalism shares attributes with both United States and German federalism. As in the United States, an essential goal of the federalist project is to allow for differences in living conditions among the constituent territorial units. When the Swiss cantons formed a federal state in 1848, they did so on the basis of a constitutional structure that was designed to allow for diversity of social, economic and political organization at the cantonal level. On the other hand, Swiss federalism is hardly competitive. As in Germany, cantons co-operate with each other, and above all the federal government co-operates with the cantons because it relies on their administration for the implementation of most policies. Finally, as in both the US and Germany, the emergence of national social security systems has shifted power and resources from the local and the state to the federal level.
Unsurprisingly, this peculiar institutional context has contributed to the shaping of social policy over the years. Overall, we can identify three different forces underlying the territorial dimension of the Swiss welfare state and working in different directions: first, a unifying and centralizing force related to the rise of the national welfare state in response to the imperatives of industrialization and societal modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; second, a unifying – but not centralizing – force arising from the co-operation of cantonal and local administrations with a fiscally and politically weak central government; and, third, a force of diversity and decentralization stemming from the combination of cantonal competencies with different resources, polities, politics and policies.