Future of Conflict #8: Swiss Democracy (Possible Solutions to Conflict in Multicultural Societies)

This week I read Swiss Democracy by Wolf Linder and Sean Mueller. I had the book (Open source PDF for the win!) for a few months, but chose it this week due to last week’s essay.

I’m convinced by Ken’s arguments that electoral democracies are screwed.

To be more precise, I’m convinced that when there’s A Lot Of Power At Stake and a Winner Take All system, the logic of power will lead to takeover attempts from powerful minorities who have a lot to lose.

As you read last week:

The takeover won’t work unless there are a lot of unhappy people who see themselves as “losers”
Demagogues and fascist narratives play an important role in the transition to authoritarianism.

This week, I wanted to explore possible escape hatches.

Ken pointed out what values were needed to underlay a system that was more inclusive of everyone’s perspective, and thus avoided one of the raw materials of fascism. I recently had conversations with people in the sortition and citizens assembly movements, both democratic alternatives to elections.

But all of those options — interest-based government, rule by lottery, and citizens’ assemblies — are quite radical. We’ll get there eventually, but isn’t there something closer or sooner or more in practice that can help us?

So I read this tome on Swiss democracy and how it’s different. The first version was published in the 1990s, and this is the fourth edition. It’s quite well done and seems to exemplify the principles it describes: it feels complete, fair, thorough, and hopeful.

I took down a lot of quotes, including multipage sections on comparisons between US and Swiss direct democracy tools and insights helpful for multicultural nations.

The two main lessons I came out with are:

Faith in Iteration
Winner Take Some (is better than Winner Take All)

Before I get into those, I have to describe some of the mechanisms of the Swiss system. I’ll make the assumption you’re familiar with the basics of the US system of government as set out in our constitution.

Mechanisms

Representative Mechanisms

The Swiss system also has 3 branches of government, but only the legislative branch is elected by the people.

The legislature has two bodies: One (The Federal Assembly) has a number of members according to population (like the US House of Representatives), and the other (The Council of States) has 2 members per canton (like the US Senate). They meet in joint session for certain types of votes and have the exact same powers.

The federal legislature is elected using proportionality by canton. Image the election results for Canton Sequim were as follows:

Green Party 35%
Blue Party 25%
Red Party 25%
Purple Party 15%

If Canton Sequim had enough people to merit 12 seats, then the Greens would get 4, the Blues and Reds would each get 3, and the Purples would get 2.

In a small canton with just 1 seat, proportionality isn’t different than majority. But in a bigger canton, all the major parties would be represented in the delegation.

The other two branches are elected by the legislative branch.

The executive branch has 7 co-presidents (The Federal Council) who have equal powers and also serve as ministers of the 7 departments of the Swiss government. There is no “leader” and they make decisions together.

From the Swiss government website:

The Federal Council reaches its decisions as a collegial body

and

The Swiss culture of consensus is also shared by the Federal Council. This means that the Federal Council seeks amicable solutions, rather than trying to enforce personal opinions by securing a majority. The desire for consensus echoes the view that a decision can only take permanent effect if all the decision makers can support it, even if they have certain reservations.

My mind was totally blown by this. Culture of consensus at the highest possible levels! Damn.

The judicial branch (The Federal Tribunal) is also elected by the legislative branch.

So, the legislature is elected by the people, and seats are distributed proportionally according to the vote.

And the other two branches are elected by the legislature, which observes the same principle of proportionality in choosing them.

Proportionality means they use informal quotas when choosing their leaders.

The legislature ensures the make-up of the other two branches (7 executives and 57 judges) reflect the regional, linguistic, political, and gender diversity of the country.

This is due to the historical origins of Switzerland being a loose and tense alliance of Protestants and Catholics (who hated each other at the time) who were themselves a mix of French-, German-, and Italian-speaking.

So that’s VERY different institutional and cultural setup than the democracy I grew up with, which I perceive as a “winner take all” system with wide swings between who is in power and thereby forcing the other side to “eat it” for as long as they can.

Direct Democracy Mechanisms

There are three basic direct democracy mechanisms in play:

The popular initiative is a formal proposition which demands a constitutional amendment. It must be submitted to the vote of the people and cantons if the proposition is signed by at least 100,000 citizens within 18 months. Before the vote, the Federal Council and the Federal Assembly give non-binding advice on whether the proposal should be accepted or rejected and occasionally formulate a counterproposal.

The mandatory referendum obliges parliament to submit every amendment of the Federal Constitution and important international treaties to the approval of a majority of cantons and the people.

The facultative referendum provides 50,000 citizens or eight cantons with the option to challenge any Act of Parliament within 100 days of its publication. If that quorum is reached, the Act is submitted to a binding vote, with a simple popular majority deciding on approval or rejection.

The first two deal with amending the constitution. The people can basically propose to amend the constitution whenever they want, and have a sort of “veto power” every time their representatives propose to do so.

This is important because:

The Constitution leaves all powers to the cantons unless specifically delegated to the federation, [so] the authorities have to propose an amendment for every major new responsibility undertaken at national level.

The constitution has been successfully changed 140 times since 1848. There are 3-4 opportunities every year to change the constitution.

The third option subjects every law to popular review, on the same (basically quarterly) voting dates.

Faith In Iteration

These mechanisms result in a funny combination. Switzerland is a conservative place that is slowly, but inexorably, moving towards “progress”.

This is because the institutions described lead to both stability and openness:

Stability happens by letting all important groups participate in collective decisions, either through political parties and governmental or parliamentary representation; interest groups voicing their concerns in the pre-parliamentary phase; social movements building up pressure from the street; or cantonal and local governments running their own show.

At the same time, the system is incredibly open: a good idea, a determined organisation, some resources, and maybe fortunate circumstances allow almost anyone to change the Constitution or bring the entire political and economic elite to its knees.

This is similar to the idea (popularized by James Clear) that improving 1% a day at something will lead to a 37x growth (3778%) after a year. There is no immediate radical improvement, but there is a consistent ability to improve.

One of the main functions of these mechanisms — perhaps disappointing for progressives — is to keep the representatives (“the elites”) more closely tied to the median state of popular attitudes. This tends to slow down change, including progress. It’s harder to end slavery and expand civil rights to minorities with these kinds of mechanisms.

Example: Women in Switzerland got the right to vote in 1971. (pretty late)

But it does almost guarantee a slower form of dynamism: when the median consciousness changes, there is no institutional barrier to changing the law.

Example: Women in Switzerland are assumed (informal quotas) to occupy close to half of the Presidency and Supreme Court.

Going back to last week’s critique of democracy from Ken, the major vulnerability here is the role of money and propaganda in politics, due to its ability to influence the perspective of large amounts of people.

If the median state of popular attitudes is the result of people voting against their own interests (due to propaganda), Faith in Iteration doesn’t get us very far. I still like it because it reminds me of the virtue of Patience, and, of course, MLK’s quote:

The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Winner Take Some

My other major takeaway here is that Sharing Power Changes Everything.

The origin of Swiss democracy involved Catholics and Protestants antagonists, Urban and Rural splits, and 3 different linguistic and cultural groups. In the early days, one of these groups (known as the “Radicals”) tried to impose their will on the minorities (rural Catholics).

Due to the direct democracy features (referenda) and the power of the cantons (federalism), they were unable to do so. They couldn’t make power work for them, so they were forced to go to dialogue. The Radicals ended up giving a seat on the council to their opponents to get political buy-in so they could actually pass some laws.

This ended up with the dissidents (rural Catholics) feeling included in the government, and led to genuine interest-based politics (for those groups at least).

The direct democracy mechanisms tend to have the same power sharing effects as the culture of proportionality.

In practice, the legislative reefer is rarely used (only 6% of the time). But when it is used, it works (reverses the law) about 42% of the time.

Therefore, the risk of an optional referendum defeat is taken seriously by federal authorities.

As Michael Jackson would say, “No one wants to be defeated”.

The perceived omnipresent risk of a referendum being organised leads the federal authorities to avoid the referendum trap by two means: first, an intensive pre-parliamentary consultation phase allows ascertaining the degree of disapproval by different actors. Second, in taking into account opposing views that are dangerous enough to bring everything down, the government then presents a legislative bill to parliament that is already a compromise backed by a large coalition of interest groups and political parties.

This is actually quite genius. The fact that people are willing to use the referendum means the government proactively consults people to see how much disagreement is out there, and then integrates their feedback (hopefully addressing their interests) before making the laws. And, 94% of time, they get the process right (no reefer challenge).

The reefer mechanism forces power sharing:

The referendum has profoundly changed the Swiss way of political decision-making. The majority thus began to strike political compromises with the minority, finding solutions that did not threaten the status quo of groups capable of challenging the bill. This integrative pressure of the referendum transformed majoritarian politics into power-sharing.

It’s basically the same story with the initiatives: while they only suceed 10% of the time, they allow the people to provide leadership:

Direct success in a popular vote is rare. But defeat does not always leave proponents with nothing. Sometimes the federal authorities pick up ideas from an initiative by drafting a counterproposal or fitting them into ongoing legislative projects. This way, the long shots of popular initiatives are transformed into proposals that are more in line with conventional wisdom and therefore stand a better chance of being accepted.

At the root of many important federal policies — from social security through the environment to equal rights — we can find a popular initiative. In this way, ideas too innovative and radical at first can later be transformed into proposals acceptable to a majority. In the long run, these indirect effects of the initiative may be even more important than rare direct success.

The main benefit from a conflict resolution perspective is that the decision-making process is more inclusive and continuous.

The entire political process aims at reaching a political compromise.

Remember “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” and read that again:

The entire political process aims at reaching a political compromise.

Instead of a (small) majority that imposes its solution onto a (large) minority, we find mutual adjustment: no single winner takes all — everybody wins something.

The referendum challenge, the strong influence of cantons and interest groups, as well as the multiparty system, amount to formidable veto points that simply do not allow for majority decisions and compel political actors to cooperation and compromise.

OMG, “compelling political actors to cooperation” sounds so dreamy and responsible.

Okay, but under what conditions can everybody win something?

The idea that ‘no single winner takes all, everybody wins something’ has not always worked out. Mutual adjustments were most successful in the period leading up to the 1970s, when economic growth allowed the distribution of more public goods. In the aftermath of World War II—an experience that unified the small country—many old antagonisms between ideologies had disappeared. Optional referenda were few, and the success rate of obligatory ones was high.

Consensus became more difficult to achieve after the recession of the 1970s. With lower economic growth after the first oil crisis, there was less surplus to distribute. Political redistribution in social security and the health system became a zero-sum game: what one actor won, another lost.

This is similar to Peter Kropotkin’s understanding of evolution: In conditions of abundance, cooperation is the rule, while in conditions of scarcity, Darwin’s logic of survival is the dominant strategy.

But this is directly applicable to Ken’s question: If there is less to “win” there will likely be less desire to mess with the system.

And there is much less to win because:

There is no single, powerful executive
The executives are committed to consensus and elected indirectly
All major decisions are reviewed by the people (quarterly)
The constitution can change at any moment.

I think of investing in destroying democracy like a business proposition. There’s a big up-front investment and an infinite amount to gain. It’s probably worth it. But if there is less to gain and the game may change at any time, it’s like starting a business in an unstable environment… Risky business.

Perhaps my greatest takeaway from this week is actually quite basic: There are many levers we can pull in democracy. Our electoral democracy is just one way of doings things and it’s quite a fertile endeavor to understand some of the other options successfully in use.

Conclusion

Switzerland is not some magic fairy land or a panacea for first-world problems. The authors are clear on that from the beginning, and take great pains to show how the mechanisms evolved out of the cultural differences and clashes of the region. It’s not an easy model to export.

What we can learn is somewhat more abstract and universal.

Proportionality leads to more inclusion and less resentment.
Mechanisms that force elites to Share Power (Winner Take Some) result in a Culture of Consensus, because people have to work together.
Direct ability to change the constitution keeps elites “honest” and can make life harder for would-be fascists.

There is a lot more in that book. I put a lot quotes on the blog page! I’ll close with a section on cleavage in multicultural society because it’s a useful framework.

(Hard not to put a graphic in, but I’m gonna resist!)

One particular condition which can be decisive for the success or failure of political integration is cross-cuttingness. Cleavages related to religion, language, and the economy can be territorially overlapping or cross-cutting. When cleavages overlap, it means that a linguistic minority is also a religious minority and belongs to the poorer social strata of a society.

If cleavages are cross-cutting, minorities are split into different groups. For instance, one part of the linguistic minority belongs to the religious majority, while another belongs to the religious minority.

From a theoretical point of view, it is evident that in this case, integration has better chances: a linguistic minority feels less discriminated against and may even be rewarded by integration if it is part of the religious majority.

In situations of overlapping cleavages, however, the same group may suffer from multiple discrimination, which creates a much higher potential for grievances and ultimately political conflict.

Importantly, this also operates on a personal level:

Most Swiss cultural groups have experience with being part of both a minority and a majority. This has been very important for the development of a culture of tolerance and pluralism.

In your group conflicts, what are the cleavages like? How many people have an experience of being on both sides of the divide? How does it affect your ability to understand one another and work together?