William Emmanuel Rappard, Government: Switzerland

William Emmanuel Rappard’s signed country subsection of an encyclopedia entry, first published in 1932 and republished in 1937, explains Swiss government through the relationship between institutions, social equality, and political temperament. Its central argument is that Switzerland’s distinctive democracy rests less on electoral machinery alone than on historically established habits of self-government, restraint, and accommodation. The subsection moves from Switzerland’s changing international significance to three characteristic features—federalism and neutrality, the citizen army, and conservative democracy—before examining executive, legislative, and judicial institutions. Throughout, Rappard treats political arrangements as expressions of a society’s character rather than as devices readily transferable elsewhere.

The opening distinguishes Switzerland’s earlier attraction as an unusually enduring European republic from its significance after the World War. Republican government and direct-democratic procedures had become more widespread, while Switzerland’s refusal to enfranchise women qualified its exemplary status. Its continuing importance therefore lay increasingly in its management of linguistic and religious diversity. Rappard locates that achievement in complementary domestic and international arrangements:

The secret of this success, which the World War at first seemed to threaten but finally confirmed, is to be found in two distinct institutions: national federalism and international neutrality.

Federalism allows minorities to govern important aspects of their lives, while neutrality protects them against foreign-policy commitments that might divide their loyalties. Rappard traces the transition from a loose confederacy to the federal state established in 1848, whose bicameral constitution consciously imitated the United States. Yet closer union and industrial centralization had not eliminated cantonal authority over education, church organization, judicial procedure, and direct taxation. Minority accommodation thus depends on substantial local autonomy, not simply on representation at the center. Neutrality extends this accommodation outward; maintaining it alongside League of Nations membership exemplifies, for Rappard, political wisdom taking precedence over logical consistency.

The army provides a second example of institutions sustained by historically specific dispositions. Compulsory service does not produce either a large standing force or an influential professional military class. Instead, the system organizes armed citizens under officers drawn from their own ranks. Rappard’s account is conditional: without inherited restraint, such a force might threaten the state; without discipline and shared commitment, it might prove militarily ineffective. Its success therefore cannot be separated from the political culture supporting it. The growing pacifistic Socialist party and the mechanization of warfare pose different challenges to this arrangement, exposing the limits of a system rooted in older social conditions.

Rappard’s third theme supplies the broader explanation of Swiss political moderation. Democracy exceeds electoral equality because its social foundations preceded the nineteenth-century extension of political rights. Early abolition of serfdom, communal landholding, equal inheritance, and direct government in the smaller cantons had already constrained inequality. Consequently, democratic politics did not need to break decisively with a deeply hierarchical social order:

As a result democracy, which elsewhere triumphed defiantly and remains aggressive and even revolutionary, in Switzerland became or rather continued moderate in its demands and conservative in its temper.

This conservatism is neither simple resistance to reform nor an absence of egalitarianism. Rappard describes a society suspicious of superiority, generous toward those below the average, and reluctant to restore equality through violence. His phrase “liberal mediocrity” conveys both the inclusiveness and the limitations of that outlook. Even the substantial Socialist electorate is incorporated into this pattern: revolutionary aspirations recede when its representatives assume governmental responsibility. Officeholding becomes a mechanism through which opposition adapts to the national majority.

The institutional discussion translates this social interpretation into an account of political authority:

These institutions are devised to assure continuity of policy and to prevent any dramatic outbursts of leadership.

Collective executives, usually including majority and minority representatives, discourage personal predominance. Their members are periodically reelected but commonly remain in office for very long periods, acquiring the outlook and efficiency of permanent administrators. These bodies can dominate comparatively amateur legislatures, yet accept electoral rejection of their measures without treating it as grounds for departure. Executive durability therefore coexists with popular supremacy: continuity belongs to the governing personnel, while final authority remains with the electorate.

The Federal Assembly balances population-based representation in the National Council with cantonal representation in the Council of States. Rappard emphasizes the absolute equality of the chambers, neither possessing special prerogatives or procedural precedence. Cantonal and municipal legislatures are unicameral. More important than these organizational differences, however, is the voters’ authority over legislation, exercised through referendums and, in some smaller jurisdictions, popular assemblies. He interprets these powers by their practical effects:

Not only the referendum, which is nothing but a right of popular veto, but even the initiative, by means of which the people themselves can introduce new measures, have in actual practise served only as conservative safeguards.

Direct participation thus reinforces caution rather than guaranteeing innovation. The judiciary likewise lacks the elevated status Rappard associates with Anglo-Saxon systems: the federal tribunal cannot invalidate federal legislation on constitutional grounds, and the legislature judges the constitutionality of its own actions. The subsection’s comparative relevance lies in this separation of democracy from heroic leadership, judicial supremacy, or revolutionary transformation. Switzerland demonstrates government grounded in minority autonomy, durable administration, and popular restraint. Rappard’s conclusion remains deliberately qualified: its institutions inspire confidence more than enthusiasm, working slowly and cautiously while meeting the needs of the society that sustains them.