Municipalities

Abstract

Abstract Municipalities are of great importance in Swiss politics and society. They provide a large part of essential public services and allow voters to have a direct-democratic influence on political decisions. In a comparative perspective, Swiss municipalities are remarkable since they carry a considerable amount of autonomy, and they fund their activities through their own tax income. In addition to this more general setting, the bottom-up conception of Swiss federalism leads to a huge diversity when it comes to their internal organization and their relationship with other actors and the higher levels of state. There are twenty-six cantonal legislatures to be considered, and important differences depend on the size of municipalities and the language area they belong to. In the German-speaking part of the country, municipalities are generally larger, more autonomous, and practice a form of assembly democracy. In the French-speaking part, the higher level is more extensively involved in local policies, municipalities are smaller, and, with their dominant pattern of elected local councils, they are in line with the idea of representative democracy. This chapter relies on the monitoring of the municipalities since 1988 and other sources to describe the legal status, autonomy, finances, and tasks of Swiss municipalities and their structural and cultural differences, as well as local political systems, representation, and reforms. It suggests that, despite the legal equality of Swiss municipalities, the major differences between them have a massive influence on their functioning. These differences are of great interest for research in local governance.