Swiss political parties: Between persistence and change

Andreas Ladner

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Electoral Systems and Political Participation Political Systems and Governance Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Abstract

From a comparative perspective, two aspects of the Swiss party system are particularly salient: the large number of parties and the relative stability of the distribution of power. Apart from social and cultural cleavages, the electoral system (PR), the competitiveness encouraged by the federal state and direct democracy can be seen as responsible for party proliferation in Switzerland. 1 Political stability stems from the integrative force of consociationalism, which has its roots in the small size of the country, its political culture, and the system of direct democracy. In Switzerland the most important parties are continuously represented in government, and there is no change of power between the parties in government and the parties in opposition. The composition of the national, as well as almost all cantonal, governments quite often remains unchanged over a long period. Since 1959, the national government, for example, has consisted of two members of the Radical Democrats (FDP), the Christian Democrats (CVP) and the Social Democrats (SPS), and one of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP). This composition is commonly referred to as the ‘magic formula’. The combination of a large number of parties and political stability is not without interest, since the literature on party research, influenced by the experience of the Weimar Republic, the French Fourth Republic, and postwar Italy, for long treated multi-party systems as inherently unstable compared with two-party systems, such as that of Great Britain. 2 However, in the last few years the Swiss party system seems to have become less stable. The 1995 and 1999 national elections brought about remarkable shifts in voting. The question is: will Swiss politics enter a period of instability and will there be serious changes in the party system? To grasp the importance of these changes, analyses restricted to the national level might be too narrow. It is a commonly accepted characteristic of the

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References

1977Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis 1979“Effective” Number of Parties 1995Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy 2017Party Systems and Voter Alignments 1989Political parties: organization and power 1980Democracy in Plural Societies 1979The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility 1990Political Parties: Organization and Power. By Angelo Panebianco. Translated by Marc Silver. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 360p. $54.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.

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