The Failure of the Radical Left in Switzerland

Abstract

Despite dramatic economic transformation in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, radical working-class politics has never become an institutionalized part of Swiss political life as it has among its neighbors France, Italy and Germany. Nor did class conflict produce in Switzerland a deeply fragmented and compartmentalized society such as is found in other small European Democracies. It is argued that decentralized social, economic and political institutions; moderate and continuous rates of economic development; cross-cutting cleavages and overlapping group affiliations; small size, and to a lesser extent political neutrality contributed to Switzerland's relatively calm “class struggle.” It is further noted that these explanations seem to fit the Swiss case best when enveloped in Lipset and Rokkan's developmental thesis of European cleavage development, in which it is argued that nineteenth and twentieth century political institutions are more able to mediate class conflict successfully when not burdened by the residue of the unresolved political conflicts of earlier periods in the development of the modern political state. In sum, by the time working-class politics reached high tide in Switzerland, most nation building issues had been resolved, and effective democratic processes had been firmly put in place.