William Emmanuel Rappard · 1948
William Emmanuel Rappard’s centenary monograph explains how an alliance of sovereign states became a federal nation, and how the constitution establishing that nation changed during its first century. Its three movements—origins, elaboration, and evolution—connect constitutional arrangements to the political forces that produced and subsequently transformed them. Drawing principally on official documents, Rappard treats constitutional history as a problem of explanation rather than patriotic celebration. His account also gives Switzerland an international significance: its experience illuminates how political unity can emerge without simply extinguishing the constituent states.
The origins of 1848 lie, in this interpretation, within the cantons themselves. The regeneration movements of 1830 supplied political ideas and institutional experience that would subsequently operate at the federal level:
La Constitution fédérale de 1848 est donc fille de la régénération cantonale de 1830 et des idées qui l'avaient inspirée.
English translation: The Federal Constitution of 1848 is therefore the daughter of the cantonal regeneration of 1830 and of the ideas that had inspired it.
This genealogy complicates any simple opposition between cantonal particularism and national progress. The cantons were not merely obstacles to federation: their internal transformations helped make it possible. Yet the resulting constitution represented more than an adjustment to an existing alliance. Rappard identifies the decisive change as the emergence of a nation capable of asserting a sovereign political will:
C'est l'acte politique d'une nation qui affirme son unité souveraine.
English translation: It is the political act of a nation asserting its sovereign unity.
The central interpretive problem is consequently how this assertion became an institutional settlement. Rappard follows the making of the constitution through the organization of federal authorities, the position of citizens and cantons, and the allocation of powers and financial resources. These questions make federation concrete: national sovereignty required workable institutions and material means, not simply a declaration of common identity. His treatment keeps the political creation of unity distinct from the practical arrangements through which it could endure.
Economic integration belongs within that constitutional construction. Customs unification was a fundamental part of creating the federal state, but Rappard emphasizes that it could be achieved only on liberal foundations. The formation of a common economic space thus qualified as well as strengthened national authority. Federal consolidation did not initially mean an unrestricted enlargement of government intervention. The account links political unity with the conditions under which previously separate interests could accept a common system.
The book’s later movement traces the constitution’s transformation through successive revisions rather than treating 1848 as a completed institutional design. The revisions of 1866 and 1874, the introduction of the popular initiative in 1891, and subsequent uses of constitutional amendment reveal changing relationships among federal power, cantonal autonomy, and citizenship. Rappard’s formulation of the effects of 1874 is particularly revealing:
Alors que la revision de 1874 multiplia les fonctions de l'Etat fédératif et renforça les droits des citoyens, elle restreignit à la fois les fonctions et les droits des cantons.
English translation: While the revision of 1874 multiplied the functions of the federal state and strengthened citizens’ rights, it restricted both the functions and the rights of the cantons.
Centralization and democratization therefore cannot be understood as opposites. Citizens could acquire stronger means of political action while their cantons lost authority. Rappard distinguishes the rights of individuals from the powers of constituent states, showing how the expansion of one could accompany the contraction of the other. Direct democracy becomes part of the explanation for constitutional change, not merely a safeguard preserving the original settlement.
His century-long perspective also separates the forces directing change from the circumstances that supplied its subjects:
C'est la démocratie qui imprima à cette évolution sa direction générale et c'est la technique qui fournit l'occasion et l'objet de la plupart des revisions successives.
English translation: It was democracy that gave this evolution its general direction, and technology that provided the occasion and subject matter for most successive revisions.
Constitutional evolution thus arose from the interaction of political agency and changing practical conditions. Democratic demands helped determine its direction, while technical developments repeatedly brought new questions within the constitution’s reach. The history of revision becomes an account of how an inherited political framework responded to a changing society.
Rappard’s concluding assessment is nonetheless critical. The multiplication of constitutional interventions altered the constitution’s own standing:
Destinée par ses auteurs à servir de guide au législateur ordinaire et de cadre à son œuvre, elle est devenue pour lui à peine un obstacle — souvent ignoré et aisément contourné — et parfois même un simple instrument.
English translation: Intended by its authors to serve as a guide to the ordinary legislator and a framework for his work, it has become for him scarcely an obstacle—often ignored and easily circumvented—and sometimes even a mere instrument.
The achievement of national unity therefore does not exhaust the book’s argument. Its larger question concerns the survival of constitutional restraint amid democratic adaptation and expanding public functions. Rappard recognizes the constitution’s capacity for development while asking whether a framework repeatedly adjusted to immediate purposes can still govern political action. The centenary becomes an occasion both to explain a successful federal construction and to examine the changing authority of its foundational law.
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