William E. Rappard · 1936
William E. Rappard’s L’individu et l’État dans l’évolution constitutionnelle de la Suisse is a single-author constitutional-historical study of Switzerland’s passage from the old Confederation through the Helvetic rupture, the cantonal revolutions of 1830, the federal settlement of 1848, and the democratic-centralizing development that culminates in the later nineteenth century. Its organizing device is deliberately abstract: Swiss constitutional history is read as a changing balance between the claims of persons and the power of public authority.
L'individu et l'Etat ce sont, avons-nous dit, de pures abstractions.
English translation: The individual and the State, as we have said, are pure abstractions.
That methodological caution is central. Rappard is not writing a simple story of liberty expanding against oppression. He instead shows that “the individual” can seek two different things from constitutional change: protection against state power and mastery over state power. Swiss history, in his account, is distinctive because the second aspiration increasingly prevails over the first.
The book’s major paradox is that modern Switzerland, after freeing itself from imposed constitutional models, comes to resemble the centralized Helvetic order introduced under foreign pressure in 1798 more than the older, locally rooted Confederation.
Or, et c'est là le grand paradoxe de notre destinée, après un siècle de libre développement constitutionnel, la Suisse possède aujourd'hui un régime beaucoup plus semblable à celui qui lui fut imposé en 1798 qu'à celui dont l'avait dotée toute l'évolution nationale des siècles précédents.
English translation: Now—and here lies the great paradox of our destiny—after a century of free constitutional development, Switzerland today possesses a regime far more similar to the one imposed upon her in 1798 than to the one bestowed on her by the entire national evolution of the preceding centuries.
Rappard’s structure follows this paradox historically. The old Confederation had weak central institutions and strong cantonal bodies; 1798 brought a unitary, rationalizing state that promised equality but weakened inherited liberties. The modern citizen was no longer simply sheltered by corporate and local autonomy; he stood before an empowered public authority.
L'individu, au contraire, était faible de toute la force de l'État.
English translation: The individual, on the contrary, was weak by all the strength of the State.
The decisive nineteenth-century turn comes with liberal democracy. Rappard treats liberalism not as mere anti-statism, but as a double program: to limit government and to democratize it. The individual wants both freedom from the state and command over it.
Il est l'affirmation d'un idéal de démocratie libérale, c'est-à-dire l'expression du double désir de l'individu de s'émanciper de l'État et d'en soumettre l'organisation et l'activité à sa volonté.
English translation: It is the affirmation of an ideal of liberal democracy—that is, the expression of the individual's twofold desire to emancipate himself from the State and to subject its organization and activity to his own will.
The revolutions of 1830, then, matter because they transform cantonal constitutional struggles into a federal crisis. Liberal victories in the cantons create pressure for a new Confederation, and the national settlement of 1848 is intelligible only through that interaction between cantonal upheaval and federal reconstruction.
Envisagée sous l'angle des rapports entre l'individu et l'État, l'histoire suisse de 1830 à 1848 est l'histoire des répercussions des révolutions cantonales sur la Confédération.
English translation: Viewed from the standpoint of the relations between the individual and the State, Swiss history from 1830 to 1848 is the history of the repercussions of the cantonal revolutions upon the Confederation.
Yet Rappard’s account is sharply anti-triumphalist. Liberalism wins nationally only by invoking coercive federal power against those who resist it; the victory of liberty is thus entangled with the strengthening of authority.
Pour triompher définitivement en Suisse, le libéralisme avait donc dû faire appel au moins libéral des arguments.
English translation: To triumph definitively in Switzerland, liberalism had thus been obliged to resort to the least liberal of arguments.
The most important conceptual contrast comes in Rappard’s comparison with the United States. American constitutionalism, as he presents it, subordinates democratic power to entrenched protections; Swiss constitutionalism gives the people broader instruments for commanding the state. The Swiss individual prefers sovereignty over security.
Dans ses rapports avec l'Etat, l'individu en Suisse a donc délibérément sacrifié son besoin de protection à sa volonté de domination, tandis qu'aux États-Unis il a subordonné cette volonté de domination à ce besoin de protection.
English translation: In his relations with the State, the individual in Switzerland has thus deliberately sacrificed his need for protection to his will to dominate, whereas in the United States he has subordinated that will to dominate to his need for protection.
This does not mean that Switzerland abandoned liberty as an ideal. Rappard insists that the expansion of democratic power took place under the banner of freedom, not against it.
La liberté de l'individu demeurait l'idéal incontesté de l'immense majorité des Suisses.
English translation: The liberty of the individual remained the uncontested ideal of the immense majority of the Swiss.
The result, however, is a constitutional order in which democratic legitimacy authorizes an ever more active state. Popular rights, federal competences, fiscal instruments, and administrative responsibility reinforce one another. Rappard condenses this logic in a blunt maxim:
Qui paie, commande !
English translation: He who pays, commands!
The work’s relevance lies in its refusal to equate democracy automatically with individual liberty. Rappard’s Switzerland is not a story of despotism, but of a liberal people choosing democratic command over juridical insulation. His core insight is that modern constitutional development may enlarge the individual politically while exposing him more fully to the collective power he helps to rule.
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