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Federalism

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Swiss Democracy

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Abstract

Until the time of the French Revolution, Switzerland was not a nation but an ensemble of cantons bound together by a number of treaties. In modern terms we could define this as a system of small independent states united by an international treaty. Since all the cantons claimed to be autonomous or sovereign states, common decisions in this loose confederation had to be unanimous and therefore all the decisions proposed by the assembly of cantonal delegates, the Tagsatzung, had to be ratified by the cantons. The question was how to create a single political unit out of this multi-state-system in order to guarantee political autonomy while neighbours were forming modern nations and to provide a common market for its growing industry.

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Notes and References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Political Science, University of Bern, Switzerland

    Wolf Linder (Professor)

Authors
  1. Wolf Linder
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© 1998 Wolf Linder

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Linder, W. (1998). Federalism. In: Swiss Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26045-4_2

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