William Emmanuel Rappard, Parties, Political: Switzerland

William Emmanuel Rappard’s signed country contribution to an encyclopedia article, originally published in 1933 and republished in the documented 1937 version, explains Swiss parties through the institutions and social divisions that shape their organization. It moves from the persistence of cantonal politics to national parliamentary groupings, then sketches the principal parties and the transition from Radical Democratic predominance to coalition government. Its central argument is that federal parties cannot be understood simply as nationwide electoral organizations: their parliamentary coordination overlays political allegiances that remain primarily local.

The political parties like the politics of Switzerland were originally and are still primarily cantonal.

Rappard treats the growth of national organization as a response to the federal state’s expanding responsibilities since 1848, rather than as the disappearance of cantonal identities. Four circumstances sustain the local basis of politics. Cantons differ in occupational and social structure, language, and religion, so regional similarities can outweigh differences between parties. No nationwide popular election selects the federal executive or judiciary; these are elected by the Federal Assembly, as is the army’s commander in chief in the event of mobilization. Referendums frequently divide parties and produce alliances across party boundaries. Finally, federal constituencies remain within cantonal borders, and candidates rarely stand outside their canton of residence. These arrangements weaken the occasions on which citizens might develop an overriding national party allegiance.

The Socialist party supplies the revealing exception. Rappard connects its more centralized organization to its relatively recent origins, foreign influences, urban wage-earning membership, and inclusion of freshly naturalized citizens less attached to a particular canton. Marxist doctrine and class discipline prevent official divisions on national issues, while Socialists are more willing to nominate candidates outside their home cantons. He condenses the contrast into a deliberately paradoxical formulation:

Thus paradoxically the political party least national in its general policies is the most national in its organization.

Here “national” describes two different things: the orientation of policy and the territorial integration of an organization. A party can be internationally oriented yet more consistently coordinated across Switzerland than parties with deeper local roots. This distinction sharpens the article’s larger argument that ideology, electoral activity, and organizational reach need not coincide.

On the federal plane the political parties are not in the first instance electoral organizations.

Federal parties chiefly serve members of the Federal Assembly in electing the government and forming legislative committees. Rappard accordingly presents National Council seat figures for 1919–1931, following the introduction of proportional representation, as evidence requiring institutional interpretation. Four major parties together hold more than nine tenths of the seats, but their numerical prominence does not imply equivalent historical roles. The Radical Democrats founded the federal constitutional order; the Catholic Conservatives opposed it; the Socialists grew with industrialization; and the Farmers and Artisans emerged from a recent split within Radicalism.

The party sketches trace how older constitutional and religious conflicts intersect with newer economic divisions. Responsible for the constitution of 1848, the Radical Democrats favored centralization and representative over direct democracy. Their early anticlerical and anti-traditional position moderated with socialism’s emergence, although they continued to support state, especially federal, intervention. Catholic Conservatives, once the principal parliamentary opposition, represented the Catholic minority and defended cantonal autonomy:

As such it is the main exponent of what is called federalism in Switzerland; that is, states' rights.

Rappard’s clarification is essential: Swiss “federalism” here means resistance to centralization, not support for stronger federal authority. Yet even this confessional party varies regionally. It is extremely conservative in predominantly Catholic cantons and rural districts, whereas urban settings bring its religious and social concerns forward. The national label therefore encompasses different local emphases.

The smaller Liberal Democratic party preserves Protestant conservatism, cantonal rights, and economic liberalism against state intervention. Its separate organization survives in only four cantons; elsewhere comparable constituencies form the Radical Democrats’ right wing. Farmers and Artisans instead demand protection for agriculture against foreign competition and for handicrafts against large-scale industry. Socialist strength rests on a broader constituency than industrial labor alone: lower public officials and other fixed-salary citizens also support it. Rappard notes that Socialists displaced the older Grutli labor party and generally prevented separate Communist organization, although Communism spreads in the largest industrial districts where Socialists have assumed local office.

The conclusion distinguishes declining exclusivity from loss of leadership. Radical Democrats dominated parliament and government from 1848 until the World War. Catholic Conservatives entered the executive in 1891 and gained a second seat in 1919; Farmers and Artisans secured one in 1929. Radicals still ruled, but now headed a coalition in which three of seven executive members belonged to other parties. The article’s enduring analytical value lies in connecting this redistribution of power to Switzerland’s institutional structure: national cooperation develops without dissolving cantonal loyalties, while party identities combine constitutional, confessional, and economic interests.