Should the world blame the Swiss?

Insight on the News, Oct 6, 1997 by David Wagner

The Swiss businessmen and diplomats with whom Insight met during a week in Zurich are both the most and the least sophisticated of people. And they're paying for it!

Switzerland is an amazing country, simultaneously an informal association of self-governing mountain clans as well as a world-class commercial and financial powerhouse, a position it has attained despite the fact that its only natural resource is snow. Insight was invited to visit by Faith Ryan Whittlesey, a Reagan-era White House assistant and later U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, who is president of the Swiss-American Foundation.

The country is a confederation of virtually independent provinces, or "cantons." The Swiss confederation, combining local independence with national unity, served as a model (good and bad) for the framers of the U.S. Constitution, and in turn the U.S. Constitution served as a model to the Swiss when they revamped their own in 1848.

But while for Americans the word "federal" virtually has collapsed into the word "national," it has not done so among the Swiss -- perhaps in part because they use a different word. In most of the German-speaking countries, the word translated as "federal" is the prefix bundes, as in Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or Federal Republic of Germany, from the word bund. But in Switzerland the word for "federal" is eidgenossisch, from eid, meaning "oath," and "genoss," meaning "companion." The confederation of the Swiss cantons is an "oath fellowship."

This fellowship dates back to 1291, when the independent tribes of the Alps agreed to band together to resist absorption into the kingdoms and empires surrounding them. The best way to preserve their precarious independence was to resist being sucked into any of the alliances that forever were forming and reforming next door.

Because the authority of the emperors, kings and dukes did not run in the territory of the oath fellowship, the cities of the fellowship's flatlands became known throughout Europe as places where both commercial and intellectual life could be carried out in freedom. Hence, Zurich developed from an ancient Roman tollhouse called Turricum into a place where the wealthy could bank, cutting-edge physicians could experiment and revolutionary intellectuals could plot, all without alarming the intelligence services of any major power.

But while Zurich and many other Swiss cities became extremely cosmopolitan and sophisticated, that cosmopolitanism was underwritten by the continued strength of the oath fellowship, with the inward national focus it implies. The Swiss spirit embodies the paradox of being wide open to the world without much caring what the world thinks.

The members of the Swiss elite with whom Insight met hold advanced degrees; have lived in other countries for periods of time, including the United States; jet regularly around five continents; and can switch effortlessly between French, German, English, Italian and often other languages as well. Yet, faced with the publicity bath their country is taking in the United States over allegations concerning Nazi gold, bank accounts of Holocaust victims, and the Swiss role in World War II, they are like deer frozen in the headlights. Some are angry; some are penitent; all are clueless about public relations American-style.

In trying to deal with the federal government of Switzerland, Americans often find that there's "no there there." The Swiss federal government is a thin, lean, unbureaucratic and apolitical layer resting atop the cantons. What the Swiss consider real political action takes place at the canton or village levels. There, Switzerland shows itself to be the most truly self-governing nation in the world. The Swiss even vote on traffic regulations. Compared to them, Americans allocate far more power to unaccountable bureaucratic decision-making.

While vigorous give-and-take may rule the day in the cantons, the Swiss prefer consensus at the federal level. There is a parliament in the federal capital city of Bern, directly elected by all Swiss citizens. This parliament chooses a council of seven ministers. The partisan composition of the council has been fixed since 1959 by an informal yet unquestioned consensus -- known as the "Magic Formula" -- and prevails regardless of the partisan composition of the parliament.

The federal council is expected to act by consensus. It votes, but once it has voted all members stand by the decision. The breakdown of the voting is not even publicly announced: Results become known, if at all, through the efforts of political journalists tapping sources on the barebones staffs of the federal councilors.

The Magic Formula gives the parties of the right and center-right a 4-3 edge over the parties of the left and center-left. "One thing that infuriates the international left about Switzerland," says a conservative American observer of European politics who asked not to be identified, "is that it is the only country in Europe that has never had a socialist government." At the federal level, neither the left nor the center-left have ever held power.