Talk:Politics of Switzerland

Untitled
See the discussion at the FDP page. For the time being I suggest we wait for the answer of the FDP and then make definitive choices. In the note I will add Freethinking Democratic Party as one of the translations used. Gangulf 18:53, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Economic policies
I'm not clear on whether Switzerland's famous "neutrality" also includes economic protectionism (the other half of the perjorative "isolationism". A section on Swiss economic policies would be informative. --Tokalon73 12:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

"The people"?
Perhaps a clarification of who constitutes "the people" is in order. 1.5 million Swiss residents are not citizens even though they were born in the country and thus have no citizenship rights. DHN 20:49, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * this is also misleading. The 1.5 Million include all resident foreigners, including those that arrived last week, and including children. The number of people born in, but not citizens of Switzerland is much smaller. Anybody who has grown up in Switzerland and without a criminal record may receive citizenship almost certainly upon reaching 18, if they actively apply for it. Many are deterred because they would lose their original citizenship, and thus remain non-Swiss voluntarily. This should be discussed on Demographics of Switzerland. 83.77.217.223 14:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposed merge
It was suggested that Voting in Switzerland be merged into the Switzerland main article but I think that it might be better to merge it with this article instead. Any thoughtsHdstubbs 02:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The idea is good, but looking at the current length of Voting in Switzerland, plus what is missing for now, I think creating a stub here with a redirect to the "main" article would be better than a merge. Schutz 12:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I will take down the merger tag.  Hdstubbs 18:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Deletion
"In practice, the people have the last word in every change of law if an interest group disagrees with."

I deleted above quote because it makes no sense. Hdstubbs 02:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)Feel free to put it back into the article when it has a subject. Hdstubbs 02:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Qualifications of Federal Councillors
What are the qualifications to become a member of the Federal Council ? More specifically, do members of the Federal Council have to be elected members of the Federal Assembly or not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.24.19.82 (talk • contribs) 18:00, 20 February 2006
 * No, one must only be a Swiss citizen, eligible (not necessarily elected) to the National Council. I have added this information to the article (it can also be found in the Swiss Federal Council article). Schutz 10:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Only highly qualified may apply. ;-)
 * Swiss Federal Council was recently expanded and is quite informative. One might add that a limitation that only one member per canton may be elected was modified and then dropped a couple of years ago. -- User:Docu

No overriding article on Swiss referendum
Numerous countries have an article on referendum. Given the Swiss use of them, I would have thought there would be one for Swiss. Something to think about anyway. Referendums in Switzerland. --Midnighttonight 08:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Election and the 1999 Peoples party, lack of clarity
As of September 20, this entry is unclear:
 * This "magic formula" has also been criticised in the 1960s for excluding leftist opposition parties, in the 1980s for excluding the emerging Green party, and after the 1999 election particularly by the People's Party, which had by then grown from the fourth largest to the largest party. In the elections of 2003 the People's Party (formerly the smallest of the 4 parties represented in the Federal Council) gained a plurality of seats in the National Council and received (effective January 1, 2004) a second seat in the Federal Council, reducing the share of the Christian Democratic party to 1 seat.

It is not clear by what measure the People's party in 1999 is the largest party, and useful to know: is it by votes in the election, seats won in the National Council, or the Council of States, or both houses combined, or some other measure? Yellowdesk 19:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC) tyler snyder smells

Really unseen?
>Switzerland features a system of government not seen at the national level on any other place on Earth: direct democracy

I've read the paragraph and it doesn't seem to me that Switzerland is unique in the world, i.e. in Italy people can play a role in the legislative process about in the same way: propose a law with 50000 signatures, ask for a referendum against an existing law (with no time limits) and repel a change to the constitution with a referendum. You should explain why a Swiss situation is different or remove this statement.

Tcp-ip 21:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Are the referendum results in Italy binding? Many countries feature some kind of referendum where the results serves merely as something like a recommendation. In Switzerland, it's absolutely binding; if a law is rejected by popular vote, the government can't change this - the law is gone. Also, the Swiss can't propose a law at the national level, but amendments to the constitution, which is a level above mere laws, and the decision of popular votes again is absolutely binding. Can you give sources regarding the role of direct democracy in Italy? This is new to me and I think it's very interesting. Anyway, combined with the unique collective head of state, the Swiss Federal Council, the Swiss system as a whole certainly is not seen in Italy or anywhere else. Gestumblindi (talk) 02:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * yes, the result is binding. About sources, you can find something on Wikipedia itself (here). If you can read italian, here is the complete law about direct democracy. Tcp-ip (talk) 21:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Important notice
The government section of the "Outline of Switzerland" needs to be checked, corrected, and completed -- especially the subsections for the government branches.

When the country outlines were created, temporary data (that matched most of the countries but not all) was used to speed up the process. Those countries for which the temporary data does not match must be replaced with the correct information.

Please check that this country's outline is not in error.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact The Transhumanist.

Thank you.


 * how is this important, and why do you insist on spamming random article talkpages with updates on your "outline" project? Perhaps the conclusion you should draw is that it is an extremely bad idea to use a "speeded up process" to create hundreds of "articles" and then leave the to rot because nobody feels called to look after them. Instead you attempt to drain workforce from the body of Wikipedians who are actually writing articles to clean up the huge mess your "speeded up process" has left behind. --dab (𒁳) 09:52, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Article
For your information: Richard W. Rahn, "Switzerland, a country that works", The Washington Times, Monday 11 August 2014.

128.178.197.229 (talk) 06:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Parliamentary or Presidential System?
I'm not sure which category Switzerland belongs to. Currently it's classified as a directorial republic, though I still see parliamentary republic mentioned in the main Switzerland article. Being directorial doesn't really answer this question, because all it means is that executive power is legally shared by a group. It still leaves the question of whether that executive authority is derived from the legislature or is independent from it.

It looks like the Federal Council is elected by the legislature but cannot be dismissed or impeached by the legislature? So wouldn't the executive be independent in this case? Abstractematics (talk) 07:24, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Extremism
"Political extremism is not a widespread phenomenon in Switzerland, although far-left extremism has increased slightly since the turn of the century in 2000 has resulted in improved organization of the far left, but it has no noticeable impact on parliamentary or direct democracy. Far-left activists briefly won the attention of mainstream media for protesting in favor of open borders and against the banning of the construction of minarets. The federal police further recognizes some activity by extremist Islamist groups as well as extremist or violent ethnic Albanian, Turkish, Kurdish and Tamil groups which mostly remain under-cover and aim at funding their activities."

I removed the above section, assuming it to have been a simple act of vandalism rather than a genuine contribution. However, Winner 42 reverted my edit with the comment that the deleted section was not vandalism. I guess, as at least one user considers it to be a useful and acceptable contribution to Wikipedia, the appropriate step is to open the issue for discussion here on the talk page. I think it should be deleted due to the non-neutral POV (open borders and allowing the construction of minarets do not meet any usual, neutral definition of "extremism"), because of lack of citation and furthermore because of lack of notability (a slight increase in far-left extremism with "no noticeable impact on parliamentary or direct democracy" does not warrant mention).

The last sentence could be retained, but then I think the section would need to be expanded to include mention of other extremist groups.

--Static Sleepstorm (talk) 10:44, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I have no strong opinions on the inclusion of the section or not. My main opposition was your characterization of it as vandalism. It is clear that the section is not a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia". Sections on politic extremism can be valid additions to the encyclopedia if they are sourced properly and are neutral. This does appear not to be those things though so it will either need improvement or removal. Winner 42  Talk to me!  14:07, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * OK then, in that case I suggest deleting the whole Extremism section. I would have suggested leaving the last sentence as it certainly seems relevant, but the link in its citation is dead. I agree wholeheartedly that a section on extremism could be a valid addition to this page, but I don't have the knowledge or expertise on the topic to make any real contributions myself. With a brief bit of research I did find a 2001 Swiss police report on far-right extremism as well as a handful of news stories of varying levels of credibility referring variously to far-right, far-left and Islamic extremism, but at the moment I don't have the time or inclination to do the necessary research to rewrite this as a meaningful, informative and unbiased section. Until someone better qualified to rewrite the section comes along, I'll just re-delete it if there are no objections. --Static Sleepstorm (talk) 15:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * the section is neither complete nor perfect, but neither does it have any of the problems you seem to think it has. If you can't be bothered to improve it just leave it alone please. The Swiss Federal Police publishes a report on the topic every year, and just because the link to the report was broken doesn't make the report itself anything less than a quotable reference. --dab (𒁳) 15:44, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
 * You haven't really proved anything by simply saying it doesn't have any of the problems I seem to think it has. It is a very clear breach of NPOV. The person who wrote it is clearly pushing a particular political stance. If you can find a reliable source that says that allowing the building of minarets is a form of extremism, then please provide it. The Wikipedia article on "extremism" provides the definition "an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied shared social consensus) to be far outside the (acceptable) mainstream attitudes of society". While you may personally consider open borders or minarets to be unacceptable, they are clearly not "far outside the mainstream attitudes of society", as they are the current norm within Europe. On the contrary, banning minarets could reasonably be considered "extremist" on the European scale (though obviously not within the Swiss context, where this is mainstream). The point is, a word like "extremist" should not be applied according to editors' personal beliefs, but according to common usage. There's relatively little controversy in describing ISIL, the KKK or the Red Army Faction as "extremists", but applying the term to mainstream views is not suitable in an encyclopædia.
 * If you want to make a useful, meaningful, informative and balanced section about political extremism, go ahead! I'm not saying there's no extremism in Switzerland or that a section about extremism isn't a valid contribution. But if you can't be bothered to write something decent, just leave it out please. --Static Sleepstorm (talk) 08:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Switzerland is a directorial republic
Switzerland is a directorial republic. Officially the head of state role is not the "President of the Confederation" but the Federal Council it self. The president is a merely ceromnial role what turn every year among it's member and don't have more power whan the others members of the council DR5996 (talk) 20:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

"Government of Switzerland" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Government_of_Switzerland&redirect=no Government of Switzerland] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 05:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)