Talk:Switzerland as a federal state

Nowhere does the article explictly state whether the Sonderbund was an alliance of Protestant or Catholic cantons. It seems more likely that it is Proetestant but it is far from clear from the writing. Was it set up to oppose measures against the Catholic church or to enforce them? Did the Protestants decide to dissolve it because they were the cantons which constituted it or because it represented the catholics? Who exactly was partty to the Sonderbund? 93.97.194.138 (talk) 11:41, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Point-of-View sentence should be removed
The article states, with magisterial naiveté: "From then, and over much of the 20th century, continuous political, economic, and social improvement has characterized Swiss history." Spoken like a true progressive! Television and "modern thinking" have so gently washed your cranial neurons that you are blissfully unaware that you are expressing opinion and not fact.

What if I don't happen to think Swiss UN membership is an "improvement"? Even more shocking: what if I think that political activity is destroying women's femininity, and that women shouldn't vote, both for their own good and for the good of their nation? What if I think Geneva should be able to mint its own coinage? It's not up to Wikipedia to decide what is or isn't a "social improvement". Delete! Writtenright 04:09, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Writtenright

Well, if you do not think these ARE in facts improvements, aren't you stating an opinion, too, and a minority opinion at that, since all of these alleged improvements were passed by a majority of population and cantons. I think the sentence should stay in, altough you could change improvements possibly for reforms. Halbwolf (talk) 22:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Question on Voting on New Constitutions
The article says the 1848 and the 1874 constitutions were accepted or ratified via vote by canton, so many cantons voting for and so many against. Did the populace of each canton participate in voting to determine whether or not to accept the new constitution? Or did representatives alone of each canton cast votes? The article mentions that a certain number of Swiss citizens can force a referendum, but it doesn't specifiy that these same Swiss citizens could vote to establish the consitution.JGC1010 (talk) 01:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

artice scope
this article is the somewhat awkward combination of two items, That's not necessarily a problem, but as a result of its title, the article "forgets" to discuss events of the 1848 to 1914 period not directly connected with federalism. Most notably Industrialization. --dab (𒁳) 11:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * the history of Switzerland during the 1848-1914 period, i.e. connecting Restauration (Switzerland) andSwitzerland during the World Wars
 * a discussion of federalism in Switzerland (de:Föderalismus in der Schweiz) and the history of the Swiss constitution.

Quality of the article
In my opinion, the quality of the article could be improved greatly. On the one hand, he does not explain the subject (Swiss federalism and its history). On the other hand, most of what the article talks about is general history of the Swiss constitution which does not belong in this article. If you agree, I could expand the article on the basis of the one in the German Wikipedia, which I wrote and which has featured as an excellent article last summer. What do you say?--FWS AM (talk) 10:31, 11 February 2024 (UTC)