Swiss Federalism: The Transformation of a Federal Model by Adrian Vatter

Author:Adrian Vatter [Vatter, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351865821
Google: wNFfDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39826662
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

To sum up, the most important differences between the political actors at municipal level compared to the federal and cantonal level can be summarized as follows (see Geser 1999; Horber-Papazian 2007; Ladner 2008; Linder 2012;

Horber-Papazian and Jacot-Descombes 2014; Auer 2016; Vatter 2016):

• As mentioned, the municipal executive power, together with the municipal administration, has a strong position, enjoys relatively considerable autonomy of decision (Auer 2016, p. 159), and takes on duties more likely to be the responsibility of the legislature at the upper levels. Local administrations in particular are important and influential actors in both smaller and larger municipalities.

• Compared to the federal level as well as to many cantons, municipal legislatures are distinctly weaker and performs their triggering and legislative functions only in a limited way. Rather, it is the executive and administration that prepare relevant submissions. With regards to a democratic theory perspective, municipalities with municipal assemblies raise questions about low turnout rates (less than 5 per cent in municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants; see Ladner 2016, p. 36) as well as a highly distorted socio-structural representation (Stadelmann-Steffen and Dermont 2015; Ladner 2016). Newer forms of political participation or interactive citizen fora (e.g. World Cafés, Real Time Strategic Changes, Future Search Conferences; see van der Heiden and Krummenacher 2011; Kübler et al. 2015) may, at least partly, compensate for the distorted representation in assembly democracies.

• Traditionally, municipal parties have played a very important role in local politics with their influence increasing significantly as the size of the municipality increases, while the size of associations and residents’ groups remain virtually constant (Ladner 2008). In recent years, municipal parties in the smaller municipalities in particular have considerably lost in significance (Geser et al. 2011, p. 47), if not at all disappeared, while those in larger municipalities have become increasingly polarized. The result has been a rise in the number of independents in municipal executives (e.g. municipal councillors without party affiliation) of small municipalities, and general losses for the parties in the Federal Council. “Local politics, shaped by parties in the larger municipalities, stands increasingly vis-à-vis party-less local politics in the smaller municipalities”, as Ladner observes (2008, p. 75). Put differently, politics in the cities (i.e. urban municipalities) are still the core business of the two governmental parties FDP and SPS (Statistik der Schweizer Städte 2017, p. 84).

• Unlike at the federal level, associations have only a rather weak influence on local politics – with the exception of local farmers associations in small, rural municipalities (Fiechter 2010).

• Generally speaking, direct democracy at the municipal levels encompasses the “full panoply of direct-democratic institutions” (Auer 2016, p. 151; own translation) sometimes even providing for forms which are totally unknown at both the cantonal and the federal level (ibid., pp. 151–153). However, the importance of direct democracy at the local level differs according depending language region and municipality size (Bützer 2007; Ladner and Fiechter 2012). While in the German-speaking cities direct democratic instruments such as initiatives and referendums are used regularly, they are

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