A recent trip to Switzerland confirms the fact that Switzerland still works, and it works very well. With a population of only 7.3 million people, Switzerland is one of the wealthiest, most democratic, least violent, most market-oriented countries in the world with the weakest central government and most decentralized social welfare system. Founded in 1291 near Lake Lucerne, the Swiss Confederation may be the most sustainable nation-state of all-time.
Situated in the heart of Europe, Switzerland has always existed in a state of tension between opening and closing its borders to the outside world. Even today it has nearly one million so-called "guest workers." For centuries it has been an area of settlement and a transit region of European north-south commerce. The country's economy has long been geared to processing imported raw materials and re-exporting them as finished goods such as specialty foods and pharmaceutical products.
The Swiss enjoy state-of-the-art technology and their banks and financial institutions are among the most stable and financially secure anywhere in the world. The same is true of the Swiss franc.
Swiss Federalism
Over the past seven hundred years or so Switzerland has developed a unique social and political structure with a strong emphasis on federalism and direct democracy which brings together in its 26 cantons (tiny states) four languages and cultures, German, French, Italian, and Romansch. Its cantons enjoy considerable autonomy. One finds a host of local and regional cultures and traditions melded into a patchwork of sights and events that are "typically Swiss."
As Austrian economist Leopold Kohr once noted, unlike the Americans, the Swiss have solved their minority problems by "creating minority states rather than minority rights."
Switzerland has a coalition government with a rotating presidency in which the president serves for only one year. Many Swiss do not know who of the seven Federal Councillors in the government is the president since he or she is first among equals.
At one level Swiss federalism is a very sophisticated variation of a form of multi-dimensional management practiced by a number of highly successful American companies in the 1980s called matrix management. Among those companies were Alcoa, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Federal Express, IBM, Intel, and Shell Oil. The defining characteristic of matrix management is a multiple command system in which a manager has more than one boss. For example, a manager may be accountable to the managing director of a specific business such as gasoline but also have a responsibility to a corporate boss say in sales or marketing.
In Switzerland a French-speaking Swiss may live in the canton of Neuchatel, belong to the Roman Catholic Church, and participate in French culture yet still be subject to federal laws. But unlike the United States where the federal government is much more powerful than state governments, Swiss cantons possess a considerable amount of political clout.
Direct Democracy
A petition signed by one hundred thousand voters can force a nationwide vote on a proposed constitutional change. The signatures of only fifty thousand voters can force a national referendum on any federal law passed by Parliament.
Several cantons still follow the centuries-old traditions of Landsgemeinde or open-air parliaments each spring. Others are experimenting with voting over the Internet.
However, it is at the commune level that Swiss democracy is most direct. There are 2902 communes in the Swiss Confederation, each run by a local authority, many of which, like the cantons, enjoy a high degree of independence.
Swiss Neutrality
Switzerland has not been involved in a foreign war since 1515, and has remained neutral since 1815. However, it is heavily armed. It has never been part of a larger empire.
Swiss foreign policy is based on four premises: (1) Switzerland will never initiate a war. (2) It will never enter a war on the side of a warring party. (3) It will never side with one warring party against another. (4) It will vigorously defend itself against outside attack.
The Swiss Constitution states that "Every Swiss male is obligated to do military service." Women are accepted on a voluntary basis but are not drafted. In case of war, several hundred thousand men and women can be mobilized within a few days.
Even though Geneva is home to many agencies of the United Nations, only recently did the Swiss vote to join the U.N. They have consistently rejected membership in the European Union, even though the Berne government favors membership. However, the Swiss do trade with EU member nations.
In terms of foreign aid contributed to Third World countries, the Swiss contribute nearly three times the percentage of Gross National Income contributed by the United States.
Infrastructure
Despite fierce independence, Swiss towns, villages, and cantons do cooperate on major infrastructure projects involving the general public interest including railroads, highways, tunnels, electric energy, water supply, and pollution abatement.
Many Swiss villages are linked by a network of passenger trains. Through efficient, high-quality railroads, village residents have easy access to neighboring villages as well as larger cities such as Geneva and Zurich. The railroads provide a sense of connectedness to the rest of the country and to Europe.
Geneva and Zurich are consistently ranked among the ten best cities in the world in which to live.
Humane Health Care
In the highly decentralized Swiss health care system it is possible for patients, physicians, clinics, hospital, and insurance providers to be in community with one another. Unlike the United States, 95 percent of all Swiss citizens are insured against illness by one of four hundred private health insurance funds. The Swiss health care system is second to none as demonstrated by the fact that the Swiss infant mortality rate is among the lowest in the world.
Quality Education
Although the Swiss constitution stipulates that "the right to sufficient and free primary education is guaranteed," there is no federal or national Department of Education. Rather education is governed by 26 different cantons. Kindergarten is voluntary and free. Some 99 percent of Swiss children attend at least one year, 63 percent for two.
Decentralized Social Welfare
Swiss children are taught in small schools the virtues of self-sufficiency, hard work, cooperation, and loyalty to family and community. Since public assistance is funded locally, it pays for the community to discourage dependency.
Aid plans are custom-designed with strict time limits. The objective is to help the client get back on his or her feet. For a few francs one can obtain any individual's tax return, no questions asked. This helps keep welfare clients honest.
The Swiss practice what conservatives preach but rarely practice, complete decentralization of the responsibility for social welfare. The inescapable conclusion engendered by a visit to Switzerland is that Switzerland works. It works because it is a tiny, hard-working, democratic country with a strong sense of community.
Alpine Villages
Scattered throughout the Swiss Alps and neighboring Austria, Bavaria, and Northern Italy are dozens of small villages all of which are several hundred years old, each possessing a strong sense of community.
In most Alpine villages, there is an inexorable commitment to the land. A gift of land from one's parents carries with it a moral obligation of continued stewardship. Few would think of selling their land and leaving the village.
The church is often the center of village spiritual life, as well as social life. Friends meet at the market, the pub, the inn, the post office, and the churchyard to catch up on village news. The severe winters create an environment encouraging cooperation, sharing, and trust. The extraordinary beauty and the severity of the winters provide the glue which holds these communities together.
In these villages, in stark contrast to the rootless mobility that characterizes American life, one finds a sense of continuity where the generations are born, grow up, remain, and eventually die, a mentality which pervades all of Switzerland. Protective agricultural policies have made it financially viable for families to remain in the countryside. Conspicuously absent is the dilapidation, deterioration, and decay found throughout the American countryside, particularly in the rural South.
Swiss Agriculture
Even though only 4 percent of the Swiss people still live on farms, they manage to produce two-thirds of the foodstuff consumed annually by the entire country; the other third being imported from abroad.
So important is agriculture to Swiss culture, Swiss tourism, and ultimately the Swiss economy, that the Berne government has devised a creative system of direct payments to farmers over and above the income they receive from their produce remunerating them for the services they provide to the population as a whole. These services include managing the rural landscape, managing the natural heritage, ensuring food supplies, and encouraging decentralization. Payments are made to farmers only if farm animals are kept under animal-friendly conditions, reasonable amounts of fertilizer are used, a suitable area is set aside for the maintenance of environmental balance, crops are rotated, soil quality is perfected, and plant protection products are used sparingly. The sophisticated payment formula also takes into consideration the farmer's age and income level as well as farm size and the number of farm animals. In Switzerland, sustainable agriculture is neither left to chance nor the market alone.
Since small Swiss farms use fewer nitrates, pesticides, and herbicides, wells and streams are much less likely to be contaminated than in the United States. Swiss farmers have been pioneers in the field of environmental-friendly production methods, and serve as examples for other countries to follow.
Environmentalism
Although acid rain has taken its toll on Swiss forests, water pollution, with a few notable exceptions, is rare. However, Switzerland and France have recently experienced disastrous Alpine road tunnel fires. Environmentalists have opposed reopening these tunnels, arguing that heavy truck traffic pollutes the air and harms people and trees in areas of great beauty visited by many tourists. They insist that freight should be hauled in containers carried on trains rather than barreling through the Alps in convoys of polluting trucks.
Per capita energy use in Switzerland is only 46 percent of that in the United States in spite of the harsh winters experienced in the Swiss Alps.
Not surprisingly, there are not nearly as many federal government environmental regulations in Switzerland as there are in the United States. Concern for the environment originates at the village and canton level in Switzerland, not in Berne.
Criticism
But the Swiss are not without their critics. Some view them as arrogant, narcissistic, racist, secretive, sexist, and xenophobic, despite the fact that they live together peacefully with many foreigners, currently nearly 20 percent of the Swiss residence population.
Unfortunately, Zurich with Europe's biggest drug abuse and AIDS problem, has become an ignoble exception to the Swiss rule. Before it was closed by the police, the once-elegant Platzpitz had become an open drug market.
Swiss banks came under attack in the 1990s for the way they handled deposits of World War II Holocaust victims as well as Nazi gold deposits. The bankruptcy of Swiss Air was also a major embarrassment to the Swiss, as was the air traffic control mishap over Swiss airspace which resulted in the midair collision of two jets.
Other Applications
The crux of Swiss federalism is a loosely defined three-dimensional matrix consisting of 26 cantons, 4 cultures, and 7 major departments of the federal government's defense, economy, finance, justice and police, foreign affairs, transportation and energy, and interior which includes cultural affairs, sports, environmental policy, education, health, welfare, and construction.
I believe Swiss federalism offers a proven alternative political system for dealing with some of the political trouble spots of the world.
Take Iraq for example. The Bush administration's futile attempt to impose a unified government on the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in Iraq is doomed to failure. Without some rational way for the competing ethnic groups to share power, Iraq will remain in a state of chaos. The name of the game is cooperative independence. That's what the Swiss matrix is all about.
No trouble spot could benefit more from the Swiss way of thinking than the territory occupied by the Israelis and Palestinians. Is it possible to think of Gaza and the West Bank as Palestinian cantons or small states which cooperate with Israel, the state which surrounds them? Such a scenario might become feasible, if the United States were to extricate itself from the Middle East.
Tension between the Spanish government and Basque separatists might be diffused, if both sides embraced more of a cooperative view of the world rather than a zero-sum view. Again the Swiss model might help.
Not unlike Abraham Lincoln's response to the Confederate States of America, Russia's reaction to the breakaway republic of Chechnya has been irresponsible and violent. The Russians could learn a great deal from the Swiss in terms of how to cope with Chechnya and other regions who may seek independence from Moscow.
Rather than continuing to centralize power in Brussels and reduce the autonomy of its individual member nations, the European Union should devote more energy to emulating Switzerland rather than the United States of America.
Created by a shotgun marriage at the end of World War I, Yugoslavia began to come unraveled about ten years after its Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito died in 1980. If Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia had spent more time studying the Swiss Confederation there might have been a lot less violence and bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia.
In the continent of Africa there are over 800 ethnic groups, each with its own language, religion, and culture. Arbitrarily imposed on Africa during the period of European colonial rule were approximately 60 geo-political boundaries defining what are today either independent countries or other political units. Not surprisingly, this crazy hodgepodge of African cultures and arbitrary political boundaries has resulted in a high degree of political instability throughout the region. Superimposing the Swiss model on all of Africa is obviously an impossible dream. But bringing Swiss thinking to bear on Africa is not.
The government of the Confederation of Canada possesses at least some of the characteristics of the Swiss Confederation. For example, its ten provinces are much more autonomous than their fifty American counterparts. Also, the struggle between Quebec and Ottawa over Quebec separatism seems to have been influenced by the Swiss paradigm.
In addition to the European American majority, the fifty American states are populated by a number of different minorities including African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Our government has typically tried to respond to the needs of these minorities by enacting national laws protecting specific rights of minorities. The track record of such legislation has proven to be mixed at best.
But the real problem of America is its size. Its government is too big, too centralized, too powerful, too intrusive, too militarized, too imperialistic, too undemocratic, and too unresponsive to the needs of individual citizens and small communities. What can America learn from Switzerland? A lot!
