Swiss Political System

A Landsgemeinde, or assembly, of the Canton of Glarus, on 7 May 2006, Switzerland.

An introduction by the authors

When in 1848 the Swiss federation was founded, it faced problems similar to those of many young democracies today: The nation state was weak, the economy poor. The societies of the 25 cantons had no common history. They were divided by cleavages of different religions and languages. The Swiss constitution was the compromise between protagonists of a central state and its opponents who had a past of belligerent conflict.

Some 160 years later, Switzerland is prosperous. Cleavages between religions have cooled out. In contrast to many countries in Europe and beyond, multilinguism has not led to discrimination of minorities, and the country is known for its political stability. One could say that this success is the product of political institutions. Switzerland is a paradigmatic case of political integration. Its democracy is different from others: The state has been developed bottom up. Federalism brings the state closer to the people, has kept the central government small and guarantees utmost autonomy for its 25 cantons. Power sharing between the major political parties – instead of majoritarian rule- gives minorities an effective voice and has led to their social integration. Direct democracy in the form of referenda and popular initiatives makes political elites more sensitive for the preferences and needs of the people. The e-book “Swiss Political System” explains how these elements work together, not without mentioning critical aspects and challenges.

Federalism, political power sharing and direct democracy, the main features of the Swiss system, attract increasing interest of academics, politicians and media abroad. Federalism and decentralisation, especially, seem to be an effective institutional device to strengthen regional autonomy and responsibility, at the same time making political institutions more effective. It would be misleading, however, to take Swiss federalism as a “model” for others. First, federalism and decentralisation can serve different objectives, and are perceived in different ways from country to country. Second, institutions are to be embedded in the specific political culture of a country, can therefore play a different role for citizens and their polity. There is not one idea of federalism, but federalisms that each have to grow on the cultural heritage of a specific political society.

Nevertheless, we invite the readers of this e-book to share with us the account on the history and the functioning of the Swiss political institutions. We hope that the living experience of Swiss democracy may be inspiring and encouraging for others. In this sense, Swiss democracy is not a model for export but a subject of dialogue.

Wolf Linder and Andrea Iff

Swiss Political System (e-book):

• http://www.swissworld.org/media/political_system_2011/?lang=en

“For a European Republic”

 

Whether political leaders or citizens, the pragmatics have failed to build a prosperous and wholly democratic EU. Now it’s the turn of the dreamers. Today, they are the true realists, write political scientist Ulrike Guérot and writer Robert Menasse. 

Ulrike Guérot | Robert Menasse

The European heads of state and governments are sitting in a burning house haggling over the total sum they will have to rustle up for the water damages from putting out the fire. The reproach that they have lost contact with the citizens doesn’t ring true: the fact is, they never had any to start with. The system we live in neither provides for nor admits any legitimate representation for the citizens of Europe.

Whoever makes “democratically legitimate” policy at the European level – that is, who has been elected to do so – has come into that position only through national elections and must, to survive politically, defend the fiction of “national interests”. Whoever today at the summits of the European Council always obstructs Community interests to win the approval of the national electorates harms all the others – and, considering how interlocked the nations are within the European single market and the eurozone, harms his own.

And the voters who celebrate that politician will become, not wiser, but stupider from their own mistakes. No European nation state today can solve a problem on its own; and yet the institutional structure of the EU community hinders solutions. What we call the crisis today is this very contradiction, and what we are discussing is only its symptoms.

This is tearing apart the European Union. An abyss yawns between political representatives – those who reckon themselves as pragmatists – the citizenry and a few dreamers. We can thank the pragmatists for the crisis. Because they have only ever tried for the “possible”: for example, a transnational currency that cannot possibly work and that can only undermine their idea, because national concerns have obstructed the tools needed to manage that currency.

Dreamers are the true realists

The problems that arise from this contradiction are being renationalised, debt declared national debts, and nations forced to struggle to deal with them at the national level. How do these pragmatists want to solve the crisis? We can thank the citizens for legitimising those who created the crisis. They compel their representatives to mimic the voices coming out in defence of the nation and to turn away from Europe.

And the dreamers? They were and they are the true realists. To them we owe them the realistic and practical enforcement of the reasonable, the outcome that seemed utopian at the time, those consequences that had to be drawn from the experiences with nationalism and European political interests that had left the continent in rubble and ashes. The first President of the European Commission, Walter Hallstein, a German, said: “The abolition of the nation is the European ideal!” – a phrase that neither today’s president of the Commission nor the current German Chancellor would dare utter. But that declaration is the truth.

Today, we could have been thanking the dreamers for the solution to the crisis. The dream, the solution: the European Republic, the idea of a European Republic, in which the regions, without giving up their character, continue on in a free association within a joint legal framework, instead of remaining organised in nations. The competition from the nation state is not turning around the crisis – it is creating it.

The Europe we live in is unsustainable in its current political and economic framework, and it will implode because national democracy and the transnational economy are falling apart. We live in a currency zone yet act as if the economies were still national and must by necessity compete with each other.

The new European project

That is why Euroland needs a transnational democracy: a European Republic, with equal political, economic and social rights and rules for all.

The Republic is the new European project: to organise its territory through voluntary membership, agreed through treaties based on the assurance of sustained peace, to overcome the idea of the nation and to build the first supra-national continent in history. The model of the United States is retro. EU – we’re the avant-garde.

The European Council, and through it the member states, claim authority over European integration – which will not come about if at the same time the mendacious melodrama of the defence of national sovereignty is being played to the gallery, to the national electorates. The sovereignty of the nation state is the illusion afflicting Europe.

If Europe can evolve into a union of shared liabilities through the banking union and the debt repayment fund, then the joint decision on spending will have to be organised differently. Euroland as the nucleus of a European Republic needs a eurozone parliament with the right to take initiatives and a voting right independent of national lists; a budget cycle coupled to the legislative period and at least partial European fiscal sovereignty; in the future, Eurobonds must resolve the shortcomings of the euro.

By the logic of a European res publica, the gains of the Pan-European value chain would also be distributed transnationally and thus an economic balance established between the centre and the periphery. By this logic, a Europe-wide unemployment insurance in this recession would bring within reach the shift to a European welfare system.

The economy, the currency and policy are all interlinked, and only a pan-European body politic, legitimised by a supranational democracy, can begin to win back control over the economy. National export balances are no strategy! When 80 per cent of exports are to the domestic market, they constitute a European accounting fraud.

Res publica at Europe’s core

The concept of res publica is by far the most valuable political idea to be born in Europe since Plato. It is the European unique selling point that can justify a “we Europeans” sentiment, because res publica includes a commitment to the political organisation of the community, from which social justice and the general welfare can be derived as normative goals. This does not exist in the United States, nor in the autocratic oligarchy of Russia, let alone in a pre-democratic China. Res publica is the core of Europe

No one knows today how this avant-garde project, namely supranational European democracy, will take form institutionally in the end. To discuss this with all the creativity that this continent is capable of is the task that faces us. Otherwise, the European peace project will wander Europe as a mere ghost of itself.

Long live the European Republic!

Referendum on monarchy in Italy, 1946

«Italy, 2nd June 1946: The Birth of a Republic»

By Luciano Casali and Roberta Mira. Bolonia University – Italy

On 2nd June 1946, Italians were called to choose the form of State that Italy should have after the end of Second World War. The institutional referendum opposed republic, something new for the Italian state, and monarchy, which had governed since 1861, when the Italian Peninsula was unified under the power of the Royal House: the Savoy.

More of the 89% of citizens voted, women included (after the Second World War they gained the right to vote), and the referendum resulted in the victory of the republic with 12,718,614 votes (54.3%) for it and 10,718,502 (45.7%) for monarchy.

Voting statistics by region

In order to understand how that result was achieved, we need to have a quick look at the previous Italian history, focusing on the period that goes between 1943 and 1946.

Italy, which participated in June 1940 in the Second World War with Nazi Germany and which was guided by Benito Mussolini, fascism’s Duce, was governed in October 1922 by King Victor Emanuel III.

Although the fascist regime entirely changed the Albertine Statute (named after King Charles Albert, it was the Italian Constitution in force from 4th March 1848) to obtain a strong supremacy on other State’s powers in order to build a dictatorship, it didn’t erase the monarchy. Being it that way, the king still was the Head of State. When the conflict started to go against Germany and its allies’ interests, Victor Emanuel III, who had always supported fascism and its military conquests (which had gave him the Emperor title), tried to dissociate Italy from the fascist regime.

On 25th July 1943, taking advantage of the Grand Council of Fascism’s sentence against Mussolini to carry out his duty guaranteed by the Albertine Statute, the king gave the order to arrest the Duce and put in his place the government’s guide General Badoglio.

Ballot

During the next months, the monarchy got in touch with Great Britain and the United States, as their military forces occupied Sicily since July 1943, to ask for a separated truce. Negotiations finally resulted in the armistice of 3rd September, although Italians just knew about it on 8th September.

The armistice caused Germany’s reaction, although it was ready long time ago to Italy’s abandonment before the conflict. The Germans military occupied a part of the south of the country and practically all the center and north, and they took a great number of soldiers from the Italian army, who didn’t have by that time any kind of orders from the king or Badoglio (they finally ran away from Rome to the south, with the Anglo-American army). The Germans freed Mussolini and gave him the chance of creating a new fascist government, the Italian Social Republic, with jurisdiction over the center and north of the country.

Until the spring of 1945, Italy lived in a situation of administrative and politic division, with a center-north in which governed the Nazis and the Italian Social Republic, and a center-south in hands of the monarchy and under control of the allied powers. While in the center-north there were fights against the Nazi and fascist forces, the Partisan Movement of Italy was created and the war continued until 1945, in the center-south, where all the territories were free and out of the conflict, the antifascist partisans and the Italian government started in 1944 the transition from fascism to a new free Italy. Leaving apart, for reasons of space, the Italian Resistenza and its movements (even though they are vital for the post-war period development of Italian history), we go into details of the situation of the freed Italian territory in order to follow the steps that led to the referendum on 2nd June 1946.

Map of Italy: Republican areas and Monarchics areas in 1946.

After the armistice, the institutional issue was very complicated for antifascist political parties, as they had to recover their figure after the fall of fascism and their position towards the south of Italy, the allies and their fight against fascists and Nazis. The Socialist Party, the Action Party, the Communist Party, the Liberal Party, the Christian Democracy Party and the Labour Democratic Party, which represented the National Liberation Committee, didn’t agree on the projects of the future Italy to build. Basically, two parts were confronted: on the one hand, communists, actionists and socialists pointed to a deep renovation of political, social and economic structures of the country; on the other hand, the rest of the political parties proposed a more moderated or clearly conservative position. Despite those differences, the representatives of the National Liberation Committee demanded the abdication of the king and the creation of a government that expressed antifascism. Regarding the form of the state, political representatives were willing to wait until the end of the war and initiate a popular referendum in order to get the last decision, but at the same time, they weren’t willing to maintain the government with Victor Emanuel III. Given that Great Britain and the United States supported General Badoglio and the monarchy, we can see that Italy found itself on a dead end.

During the months of March and April 1944, a succession of factors completely cleared the situation. General Badoglio’s government got the official recognition of the Soviet Union, desiring not to leave the decision in hands of the United States and Great Britain. This recognition was followed by a memorandum of the Soviet Foreign Minister, who highlighted the importance of a cooperation between the Italian government and the antifascist parties for the sake of the struggles against Nazis. And also, by doing this he forced Great Britain and the United States to open to Italian antifascists.

Victor Manuel III of Savoy

The Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, who was coming back from Moscow, marked a turning point in the politics of the Italian Communist Party and the antifascist formation. Communists considered the compromise with other parties in the fight against Nazi occupation and fascism very important, and they agreed to support the monarchy and the south’s government until the final victory, and they postponed the solution of the institutional issue of the country. Finally, the king gave in to pressures of some liberal characters and of the Anglo-Americans in order to find a compromise in which abdication, rejected by Victor Emanuel III, wasn’t planed. So, the king abdicated in exchange of appointing his son Umberto as Lieutenant General of the Realm after Rome was taken by the allies powers and retiring to his private life.

Before such events, by the end of 1944, a government of national antifascist unity was created and, for the first time since the overthrow of Mussolini, could see the participation of all the exponents of antifascist parties. The Head of State still was General Pietro Badoglio, supported by British and Americans as a guarantee of the armistice. But the institutional issue wouldn’t be brought up until the end of the conflict, with the approval of the National Liberation Committee and the Liberation Committee of Milan, where the headquarters of the Partisan Movement in the center-north of Italy were found.

A first solution of the problem came with the Legislative Decree of the Lieutenant of the Realm no. 151 of 25th June 1944, started by the government that took charge after Rome’s liberation, still formed by antifascist parties. However, this time they weren’t guided by General Badoglio but by the moderated Ivanoe Bonomi, representative of Italian prefascist parties and, up until then, president of the National Liberation Committee. According to the legislative decree, by the end of the war the Italian people should choose the institutional form, not through a direct referendum in which the people could be for monarchy of republic, but through a Constituent Assembly that would gather by the middle of 1946 and should write the new Italian Constitution and choose the state’s form.

Umberto II of Savoy

The referendum’s idea was clearly supported by Lieutenant Humbert of Savoy, the Anglo-Americans, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democracy Party. They feared that a Constituent Assembly chosen after Second World War could taka a strongly republican connotation caused by the presence of left-winged parties (communists, socialists and the Action Party). Those who supported a popular referendum and a postponement of elections didn’t all have in mind saving the monarchy, but they were all worried because of the progressive character that a left-winged Constituent Assembly could give to the new Italian state. By postponing the first political elections of Italian post-war period, anxieties of renovation and tension atmosphere after the conflict could be erased, and the basis of the future organization of the country could remain.

After the complete liberation of the Italian Peninsula from German and fascist occupation and after the end of the conflict, new political orientations strongly emerged.

After Ivanoe Bonomi, the government was still formed by representatives of all (or almost all) the antifascist parties, but it was a weak government, victim of the growing confrontation between left-winged parties and the moderate powers, which were influenced by the Vatican and Anglo-American representatives, who put on pressure in order to guide the political Italian future against communism. The experience of Ferruccio Parri’s government, ancient leader of the Italian Resistenza, was emblematic.

Even though they weren’t sure about the success of a referendum in a country that not long ago was dominated by fascism, that had also enjoyed from the Italians’ consent, the parties that supported republic accepted the introduction of the referendum in order to avoid the indefinitely postponement of elections.

The Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Action Party requested that elections for the Constituent Assembly and the referendum would take place the same day. The Legislative Decree of the Lieutenant of the Realm no. 98 of 16th March 1946, started by the government of the Christian democrat Alcide de Gasperi, guaranteed the decision of putting the election between monarchy and republic to a referendum. So, the Legislative Decree no. 99 of 16th March 1946 proclaimed the referendum and Constituent Assembly’s elections for 2nd June 1946.

The Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Action Party and the Republican Party openly declared themselves republicans. Republic was also supported by some liberal representatives and almost all the leaders of the Christian Democracy Party, but their position wasn’t shown for a long time since most of Catholic electors had a close attitude towards monarchy. They decided to relate the institutional fate of Italy to Catholic religion. Church was first interested in protecting the moral and the returning of the values of Christian life, in which Italians were recognised because of their culture, tradition and character. Although this party openly showed a neutral position on the institutional issue, it actually acted in favour of monarchy.

Monarchy supporters trusted the Savoy House, as they could guarantee the Catholic cultural roots of Italy and the national unity conquered by the Resurgence, a unit that should be safeguarded against the many social, economic and cultural differences of the Italian territory.

It was very clear that the ones who considered themselves in favour of monarchy controlled all the renovation projects that socialist and communists wanted to develop. Leaflets for monarchy demonstrated the danger that social changes could cause: a social-communist dictatorship, the destruction of social and public order and a civil war.

For the other hand, republic supporters highlighted the mistakes of the Savoy House from the moment they affirmed fascism power: having given the government to Mussolini in 1922, having approved the coming back to dictatorship in 1925 after the murder of socialist Giacomo Matteotti (ordered by the Duce), having supported fascist colonialism and war in the Nazi’s side, the defeat of Italian army when it was abandoned without orders on 8th September 1943 and their betrayal when they run away from Rome, an act that allowed the military occupation by Germany and many terrible consequences for the Italian people. The republican choice should have prevented Italy from falling again into the past, it should have fought the risks that allowed the coming to power of a dictator.

Referendum News

The combination of referendum and elections for the Constituent Assembly put the electoral campaign on top of the referendum about monarchy, and it seemed that the first one prevailed over the second one because, for the one hand, the parties for republic needed to distinguish between themselves in the electoral programs before elections. For the other hand, during the campaign for 2nd June divisions between moderates and conservatives (headed by the Christian Democracy Party) and left-winged progressives started to show.

Victor Emanuel III, in his last attempt of saving the Savoy dynasty and the monarchy, not respecting the ‘institutional truce’, abdicated the throne in his son a few weeks before elections. His son, who was Lieutenant General of the Realm, became King Humbert II. The success of the referendum ended with the victory of the republic and the exile of the new king and his family.

Republic wasn’t supported by a large majority. Southern and center Italy expressed their wishes for monarchy. Due to the short time in which the country passed from Nazi occupation to liberation thanks to Anglo-American allies, in the south of the country the Partisan Movement didn’t develop as much as in the north, despite the presence of armed opposition against the Germans, like the episodes that took place in Naples and Campania. This is the reason why southern Italians weren’t that familiarised with Resistenza movements.

To all this we have to add the traditional and symbolic feeling of monarchy, which was also strengthen by the Allies, who used it as a transition route to postfascism and social order maintenance. We shouldn’t forget that monarchy also received the support of the political movement Front of the Ordinary Man, which was very conservative and extended in the south and between mafias. There were exceptions in some southern areas between 1943 and 1946, where farmers, tired of working in landowners’ lands in very poor conditions, voted for republic. In some areas in northern Italy there were high percentages for monarchy, where the tradition of the Savoy was very strong. The fear to change and the uncertain future that republic carried itself were the reasons why monarchy didn’t win by few votes. This vote for monarchy was specially expressed by some public sectors, professional fields, landowners and Catholics who followed Vatican’s demands. In other words, by those who feared that rupture with ancient traditions could give way to a loss in social status and values.

However, the republic, headed by left-winged parties, received the favour of those who condemned fascism and the monarchy that had supported it, and who expected a radical overcoming of the past. Regarding this, the republican choice was due to the Resistenza period, the breaking-off with the past and the change that led to the Italian outlook.

Republic’s victory wasn’t a deep change backed by its supporters. Actually, there were many continuity routes which gathered the experience of the different aspects of Italy: republican, liberal and fascist, even though the results of Resistenza and the referendum and the most advanced aspects of the Constitution, in force from 1948.

While there were still some unsolved problems from the fascist past, national and international political contrasts and the growing contrast between the western and the eastern blocks determined a moderate change, in comparison with expectations that rose during the Partisan Movement; a change that should have marked the Italian political life for the next decades.

Referendum on monarchy in Greece, 1974

«Athinaiki» newspaper says: All Greece burns with the cry «The end of Glücksburg – at last!»

«Greece, 8th of December, 1974»

George Georgakopoulos, journalist.

Kathimerini English Edition

www.ekathimerini.com

My name is George Georgakopoulos, I am the business editor at the English Edition of Kathimerini newspaper in Athens and I will try to explain the occurrence of the referendum of the monarchy in Greece in 1974.

The question is who voted in the referendum and why the Greeks voted against the monarchy.

The poster says: «The crown to trash!»

I was born just one month before the referendum, but I know full well that my parents voted for it, just like more than three quarters of Greeks.

The result was overwhelmingly in favor of ousting the royal family, and there are several reasons for it.

First, the country was just emerging from a seven-year-long dictatorship that at first had been seen to have the blessing of the palace, in 1967, although it was later illustrated that that had not been the case.

Federica, in the early years of her reign

In fact, later that year Constantine II tried to overturn the military junta, but failed and was expelled by the dictators.

However the people had associated the royal family, and particularly Frideriki (Frederica), the mother of Constantine II and Queen Sofia of Spain, with behind-the-scenes machinations that often torpedoed the smooth operation of the elected governments in Athens in previous decades and served to steer the country’s politics to the direction of her own wishes.

The fact that she was not Greek made many people angry about her conduct, although she did have sworn fans, too. It therefore seems that in the referendum Constantine II did not only pay for his own conduct in the past, but also for his family’s sins, too.

Federica and Pablo

Another reason is that in 1974 royalty was increasingly seen as a thing of the past. It is no coincidence that the vast majority of young people voted against it, and the 30% share of the vote it got was partly from the nostalgia of older people in Greece.

Most Greeks wanted a break with the past that had only caused them pain.

Members of the Greek military junta

Finally, the result was also shaped by the fast that almost all major parties, including ruling right-wing New Democracy of Prime Minister Constantinos Karamanlis, were in favor of Greece becoming a republic.

Karamanlis, the most influential Greek of the latter half of the 20th century, had served as a Prime Minister under a king for eight years, from 1955 to 1963, and firmly believed that the republic was essential for the promotion and establishment of the democratic institutions in this country.

The poster says: «No to foreign interests submissive monarchy»

The result served to heal some of the wounds opened not only by the military junta but also from the National Split that had dated since the mid-1910s in Greece, no less than six decades.

Had the king stayed on, that would have taken even longer.

«The Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg dynasty in Greece“

More Information:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_II_of_Greece
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederica_of_Hanover
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_I_of_Greece
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_republic_referendum,_1974

The Spanish Republic

The Spanish Republic – Steve Freeman

The Spanish and English republican flags

Speech by Steve Freeman from Occupy London’s Real Democracy Working Group to the meeting held on 23 June 2012 outside St Pauls Cathedral, London, on the sight formerly held by the Occupy London camp.

 

“I think it is very important to remember that many people from this country went with the International Brigades to fight for the Spanish republic. And they would have seen this flag [pointing to the red, yellow and purple tricolor] in Spain themselves when they were part of that struggle.

 So it is fantastic that that flag should today come back here, because there is a real historical connection between the people of England and the people of Spain. And that [pointing to the red, yellow and purple tricolor] is a big reminder of that historic connection.

And another way we have that connection is of course the 15M movement in Spain, the Occupy movement in Spain, of course, was great inspiration, spreading over to America [Occupy Wall Street] and to the Occupy movement that we have been involved in here in this country.

 So it is really good that we in the Real Democracy Group have been able to make a contact with our Spanish friends and comrades, as it were, to be able to have them here to speak to us today and to remake that link.

Because republicanism is essentially about people governing themselves – it is about the power of the people. It means we do not believe in bureaucrats, in monarchies, in armed forces, in politicians ruling us. We believe in the rule of the people – that is the essence of republicanism.

 And even though this [Spanish] republic was defeated and crushed, it is inevitable that when the people of Spain begin to struggle again, begin to search for democracy again, they will find their way back to their history and the struggles that have affected them in the past, bringing that history back.

 The flag here of course [pointing to the red, violet and green tricolor] also connects with our history. Some of us have been promoting this idea of a flag that connects together our own democratic history – the history of the Levellers (Green -1648-9] who fought for a republic in English civil war – the Chartists [red and green] who [in the 19^th century] fought for the right for people in this country, working class people, to have the vote – and the Suffragettes who fought in this country for the right for women to have the vote.

 And that is part of our democratic tradition. So it is fantastic that we should see these two flags [Spanish and English republican flags] together, and that [pointing to the Spanish republican flag] really means such a lot for the people in this country who fought in Spain in the 1930s.

Thank you very much”

Steve Freeman.

London, June 23th, 2012.

http://www.republicansocialists.org.uk/