Switzerland

OVERSHADOWED BY the successes of the rightwing Swiss People's Party, the political left in Switzerland struggles to avoid increasing marginalization. As champions of working-class interests, generous welfare protections, gender equality, and environmental protection, the Swiss left resembles many of the socialist, social democratic, and ecologist forces found in most continental European polities. Although sharing some characteristics with their ideological brethren elsewhere, the Swiss left's successes and frustrations are nevertheless intimately linked to Switzerland's unique institutional configuration.

The primary vehicle for leftist interests in Switzerland is the Social Democratic Party (SP), which began to emerge from the labor movement in 1888 some 40 years after the country's founding. For much of its early history, the SP stood among the ranks of the parliamentary opposition. After the tumultuous General Strike of 1918, the Swiss House of Representatives introduced proportional representation, which helped the Social Democrats rapidly increase their seats and power. In 1943, the SP rose to become the single strongest party in parliament and for the first time captured a seat in the governing cabinet. Having earned the left an important entry into Swiss government, the SP then parlayed its way into the country's renowned “Magic Formula” in 1959. Forming the foundation of Switzerland's brand of consensus politics, this “2:2:2:1 formula” institutionalized the distribution of seats on the country's seven-person governing Federal Council (with a rotating presidency). In an arrangement that would endure for more than 40 years, the Social Democrats claimed two cabinet portfolios, as did the liberal Radical Democratic Party (FDP) and the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CVP); the avowedly right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) laid claim to a single portfolio under the formula.

In the 1980s, popular support for the Social Democrats waned, but the party reemerged as the country's strongest in the 1995 elections. In subsequent elections, the SP battled the increasingly extremist SVP for political primacy, ultimately falling behind the People's Party at the 2003 parliamentary elections that brought an end to 44 years of the Magic Formula (the SVP and CVP reversed roles, with the SVP holding two governing seats and the CVP but one). In 2003, the SP retained the support of only 23.4 percent of Swiss voters. As might be anticipated after a party witnesses a diminution in power, introspection and leadership crises have followed the 2003 electoral debacle.

In a European context, Switzerland's left wing as represented by the Social Democrats looks more like the Socialists in neighboring France than it does Britain's Labor Party or the Social Democratic Party of Germany. While traditional working-class parties in both Britain and Germany have moderated their ideological and policy positions and gravitated toward the center of the political spectrum, the Swiss left (as is the case in France as well) retains close ties with its traditional electoral constituencies and convictions. This can largely be explained by the country's institutional design, which allows the “big four” parties to take radical positions without being relegated to the opposition [Page 443]benches. The apparent permanence in power generated by Switzerland's consensual politics, however, also has its drawbacks—once in government left-wing members of the Federal Council are ultimately bound by the principle of collegiality, whereby the cabinet speaks with a single voice. Because only two of the seven Federal Council seats are likely ever filled by left-wing politicians, the Ministers are consistently pressured to endorse a more conservative public policy.

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