Integration without Immigrant Policy: The Case of Switzerland

Author(s) : Hans Mahnig, Andreas Wimmer

Source : https://libra.unine.ch/handle/123456789/16185

Abstract:

“In a famous lecture at the University of Zurich in the 1970s Karl Deutsch presented Switzerland as a ”paradigmatic case of political integration”: according to him, Switzerland, in spite of being a multicultural society divided by cleavages of religion, language, class and ideology, had become one of the most stable countries on the European continent. Deutsch identified two historical factors as the main reasons for this paradox: first, the Swiss peasantry’s resistance to the building up of a feudal State from the 10th to the 12 th century, which led to a strong municipal autonomy; secondly, a comparatively strong popular participation during the industrialisation process – the percentage of citizens with the right to vote being in Switzerland during the 18th and 19th centuries higher than in its neighbouring countries (Deutsch 1976). Other scholars puzzled by Switzerland’s stability insisted however on different explanations: for example on the fact that the multicultural character of the country is recognised through its federal institutions (Schnapper 1997, 146) or on how the conflicts between different parts of society have become accommodated through proportional representation in political institutions and through the search of compromise (Steiner 1974, Linder 1999, 359-369), often called consociational or consensus democracy (Lijphart 1977); last but not least, certain observers see in the idea of forming a community of destiny – nourished by the Swiss citizens’ feeling that they were threatened as members of a small country by the larger neighbouring nation-states – an important explanation of the country’s stability (Kriesi 1995, 15-17).”