The Swiss Federal Council: shared executive power

Stephan Kyburz:
Nenad Stojanović, welcome to the rules of the game podcast. I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Nenad Stojanović:
Thank you Stefan for your invitation. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Stephan Kyburz:
My first question as always is… What is your first memory of democracy or of politics in general?

Nenad Stojanović:
I was quite interested in politics already as a child, may I say so, but the real… Let’s say, the first democratic experience was when I was fourteen years old. It was in 1990, I was living in Sarajevo back then, in Bosnia, then it was still Yugoslavia and in autumn of 1990 they were the first post-second world war democratic or let’s say multi-party elections in Bosnia and I was quite interested in that. The main cleavage was actually between the so-called ethnic parties, you know, the parties representing the bosnian muslims, bosnian serbs, bosnian kratz and the civic parties, the multi-ethnic parties and I was very much in favor of a multi-ethnic party and was very much disappointed, actually, when the election results came out showing that three quarters of the population or, at least those who voted, voted for the ethnic parties and that was a big democratic disappointment for me and something that I later on tried to elaborate or analyze and trying to explain that with a so-called prisoner’s dilemma game as a hypothesis but that’s perhaps for another… topic for another podcast.

Stephan Kyburz:
Thanks for sharing this memory. And did that influence your decision to go into research on Democracy? Or what was your motivation to start doing research around democratic institutions?

Nenad Stojanović:
Well, given this interest that I had for politics, as an observer of politics, it was quite a natural choice for me to study political science when I finished my high school in Ticino, Ascona, in Switzerland, I went to Geneva and I started starting political science. So I’m, let’s say, trained as a political scientist and later on I, you know, finished my Phd and started working as a researcher, and gradually, democracy as a general topic and especially democracy in multicultural, multi-ethnic, multilingual societies became the main topic of my academic research.

Stephan Kyburz:
So yeah, that’s also today one of the institutions we want to talk about, that’s the Swiss Federal Council, which is quite a unique type of executive government and you have done research on the Executive Council in Switzerland. It’s a very unique type of government system. It’s kind of called a hybrid type of system. There are seven counselors… I just quickly summarize for the audience what the institution looks like… So there are 7 counselors that are elected by parliament for a fixed term of 4 years and within the council, decisions are taken by majority vote. So it’s called a collegial type of council. So the council members try to find decisions jointly and work on all different topics jointly. But then there is a decision by majority vote. So can you maybe share your view of that institutions including the historic kind of background? Where did that type of executive government emerge? And also why did Switzerland adopt that type of executive branch of government?

Nenad Stojanović:
The origins of the Swiss Federal Council can be traced back to the late 18th century and to the so-called directorate model of executive that the French, actually, the Napoleon etc… who invaded Switzerland in 1798, kind of imposed on the swiss of that time. So there was this directorate, meaning that it’s a collective body and not a single president, or king, or whatever… but it was kind of a collective executive body that was in place in this, in the so-called Helvetic Republic. So Helveti Republic was Napoleon’s creation and it lasted from 1798 until 1803, five years. But then this model of executive was, it’s not clear why and how these things happened but you could, you can find some cantones that later on, in the first half of the 19th century had something of this kind. So when the swiss, in 1848 shortly after the Sonderbund Civil War, a short civil war that happened in Switzerland in the late 1847. So after the Sonderbund war, the war that was won by liberal and mostly protestant cantons against 7 cantons that were more conservative and catholic. While the Swiss were kind of under pressure… Under pressure from the outside, especially from Austria menacing to invade Switzerland, they were under pressure to write a new constitution. A new constitution that, given the victory of the liberal forces in the Sonderbund War, a new constitution that they want to be really… You know, to make a new Switzerland as a single state not anymore some kind of confederation of quite sovereign states or cantons as it used to be until 1848 but, you know, kind of a National state. And they had a lot of debates in the spring of 1848. There was a commission that was set up with representatives from each Canton with the task to draft a new constitution and in the end, that constitution was kind of a compromise because the liberal representatives who wanted even… You know, to have some kind of a unitary state, some of them at least came to understand that, you know, in order to pacify these conservative and, as I said, also catholic cantons who lost the Sonderbund war… And so in order to have a stable state they had to accept some kind of federalism at least. So that’s how the 1848 Switzerland became a truly federal country, where you have a joint rule at the country level and self-rule at the level of the cantons and it is in those weeks in 1848 that they also decided that the executive branch of Switzerland should be this federal council composed of 7 members. Actually there was a proposal to have it… to have only 5 members but later on they agreed to have 7. So these are the origins of the Swiss Federal Council and something that is really today unique among democracies because you will not find anywhere else, this kind of institution with the kind of powers that the Swiss Federal council has. Perhaps I can add on this that the best way to describe, from an institutional point of view, what the federal council is, is to compare it actually to a president… to a president that has. 7 heads, meaning that it’s a collective presidency in a way. The only major… I would say, an important distinction from a president… Let’s say the US president is that the Swiss Federal Council is not elected directly by the people but it is elected by parliament. That’s a major distinction because otherwise the Swiss Federal Council, as I said, is a rather kind of collective presidency. Because once elected, the parliament cannot do anything at all to, you know, dismiss it. During the four years term… So It’s elected every four years but during these four years, it’s as the US President… You know, the congress cannot… Well they can impeach the president under very, very special circumstances, but we know that this is very, very difficult as the presidency of Donald Trump has shown. But basically you know there is no way that you can do something against the swiss collective presidency during 4 years. This means that it cannot be compared to typical parliamentarian systems where, of course, the government needs to have this vote of confidence from parliament and the parliament can, if the majorities change within the parliament, as it happens very often for instance in Italy, then the government fails. So this is something that cannot happen in Switzerland.

Stephan Kyburz:
So you have this element of separation of powers, right? To some degree not as clear as when you have a president that is elected by the people. But still some degree of separation of powers because the federal council can kind of work independently without having to fear that they lose confidence. And on the other side the parliament can also work pretty much independently without being busy checking the executive government like in a parliamentary system. So it’s typical, like kind of a power sharing within the executive government, so you also don’t have that concentration of power in one person like in a presidential system right? So do you agree that these are kind of advantages of that system? And do you see any disadvantages of the system?

Nenad Stojanović:
Well before turning to advantages and disadvantages I should just stress that another important difference is that this Swiss collective presidency, as I call it, is protected from, let’s say, some changing majorities in parliament, as it happens in other countries. But at the same time the federal council does not have the power to dissolve the parliament. This is also important because this is something that you will find in France, for instance, the French president can dissolve the parliament at any point or the, you know, the British prime minister, etc. So this is something that the Swiss federal council cannot do and for this reason I very often stress that the United States are the, probably the democracy that, from this point of view, comes closer to what the swiss system is with, again, the distinction that we don’t have one president but there are seven of them sharing this kind of presidency. And it’s not elected directly by the people, even though there were attempts, three times in history, through popular initiatives.They were popular votes where the people were asked: Do you want the swiss federal council to be elected directly by the people? And the last time it was about fifteen years ago and each time there was not a majority in favor of it. But the direct election of this collective kind of presidency does exist in the cantons. So this is something similar that we have at the federal level the swiss federal council, you have in every canton with the main distinction there is that this collective presidencies of the various cantons, having five to seven members, it depends on the canton, are elected directly by the people. And then similarly as at the federal level, the cantonal governments cannot dissolve the cantonal parliament and the cantonal parliaments cannot influence, actually, the composition of the government at all because they are elected by the people. So this is just to give you an idea that the kind of system that Switzerland has at the federal level is reflected at the level of the cantons and actually also at the level of municipalities, if you want. So the advantages of the system is that you do have a strong executive in Switzerland but you don’t have a single person ruling which is, from this point of view of, let’s say, the Swiss historical context, this is something that is important because in a country with 26 cantons, with 4 different languages, with many different religious groups etc… The idea to have a single person ruling during 4 years it’s not really considered as something that would work in Switzerland. So you have this strong executive federal council and each of these 7 members of the federal council can become a rotating president, and during 1 year only. But this is a purely, let’s say, protocol-like symbolic function that the swiss president is, as you say in Latin “primus inter pares” which means he’s the first among equals. So the swiss president does not have significantly more power than other members of the federal council who are not president during that year.

Stephan Kyburz:
It’s more for representational purposes also. When, for example, the president goes abroad representing Switzerland, for example.

Nenad Stojanović:
Exactly it’s, you know, to receive ambassadors, to receive the heads of state who visit Switzerland and to go abroad precisely. They also have some kind of influence to set the agenda of the federal council but to set the agenda, like really from a very formalist point of view. You know how to decide: Okay, today we have a meeting and we start with this topic and we go forward. So this is something that the president can do but in the end he or she has also only won a vote out of 7 when internally they have to decide on specific policies.

Stephan Kyburz:
Maybe one point we can add is, also, that each of the 7 council members is a minister in that sense, is a head of department, of the different departments of government. And do you see on the other side, like disadvantages or things that you think are problematic when it comes to this type of government system?

Nenad Stojanović:
Well, of course. It’s certainly more difficult to make decisions, to find compromises when you are 7 in the room than when you are a single person, you know. if you are Emmanuel Macron or Biden or Putin. you are much more free to take decisions that you think are the most appropriate whereas the swiss federal council, these 7 members, they need to spend some time together to discuss, to deliberate and to try to make decisions that are good for the country and and this can be, sometimes… take more time and in other words, the potential disadvantage is that from the point of a view of efficiency, the swiss federal council can be, sometimes very slow. Also then due to other aspects of the swiss political system, especially the direct democracy and the fact that every decision taken by parliament can be challenged in the Referendum which also kind of makes the whole process slow but on the other hand, the slowness, you can say, does have, in the long run, does contribute to some kind of stability of the system. Which means that the decisions that are taken are perhaps taken more slowly than they would have been taken in countries with only one president or only one prime minister. But once taken, these decisions tend to be more stable and to enjoy a stronger degree of trust among the people. So if I look backwards at what happened in the past two years with the covid situation, and even though, myself, I was quite critical of some decisions of the federal council. But if I observe the record of the decision made by the swiss federal council to fight against Covid, by taking into account these trade-offs that all governments faced, you know trade-offs on the one hand fighting against a very dangerous virus and protecting the health system hospitals etc.. And the people, but on the other hand also safeguarding some personal liberties, the freedom of movement, to not be restricted to too much etc. So you know every government had to make these decisions. But if I put on the balance what happened in Switzerland and what happened… That’s only, in the neighboring countries, not to extend the analysis much further only to see what happened in France, Germany, in Austria and Italy. Well I must say that the decisions of the swiss federal council were much more balanced and stable than the decisions taken by other governments. So just to give you one example that the swiss were, never during the whole Covid situation, were never restricted to leave their homes or to travel. You could board a train any time in Switzerland and travel in any region in the country. Even in the worst lockdown periods and this is something that if you see what happened in France or Italy etc. Personal liberties were much much more under pressure. And it is not the case that, from the point of view of the mortality rate and the number of infections etc… That the Swiss fare did much worse than other countries. So they did strike, I think, a good balance in a very difficult situation and this is in part, from my point of view, also due to the kind of the executive we have. Of course together with other aspects of the swiss system, especially federalism etc… But again the Swiss Federal Council, I think, to sum up, was quite relatively good at handling the situation compared to the executives of other democracies.

Stephan Kyburz:
I’m surprised, often, that actually other countries have chosen a president and not a council because a council would probably better reflect interests of the population of, let’s say, multicultural, multi-ethnic societies and still I’m kind of surprised that we don’t see that type of government, that power sharing type of government more often. So one aspect that I’d like to talk about also is the election of the federal council members. And you have also done research on that. So both chambers together, the United Federal Assembly elect the federal council and the constitution prescribes that the federal council should reflect the regions and the languages in Switzerland. Can you maybe say something about the electoral system and how the representation in parliament is reflected in the representation in the federal council? How does the parliament elect the council members and how does that reflect the composition of the population, the different regions and languages in Switzerland?

Nenad Stojanović:
And different parties, not to forget the different parties. Yeah, this is again something very interesting for political scientists to see. The electoral method used to elect the members of the swiss federal council. So the 7 members of the swiss federal council, as you said, are elected by.. In a joint session of the 2 chambers of the parliament. But they are elected separately. Each of them is elected separately. So not as a team but each of them is elected one after another. They are also elected by a pure majoritarian rule, which means that you need a simple majority, 50% plus one of all cast votes and valid votes. Which is something interesting because you will find a lot of literature, especially on power sharing and multilingual multi-ethnic societies saying that these societies should not use majoritarian mechanisms but should, you know, use more consensual, proportional systems, etc, etc. So this is another… It’s not the only one but it’s, and it’s a major kind of paradox that the swiss federal council is elected by majoritarian rules. And in a way to, through some kind of, we call it preferential voting, which means that you have… So for each of them, each of 7, you know, there are many candidates and then you have many rounds of election and in each round you eliminate the candidate who received the least number of votes and then you go to the next round etc etc. Sometimes you have, you know, many rounds in order to elect one single member of the federal council and as I said, you know, there are 7 of them. And this has an effect. That’s what I described or analyzed in that article that you mentioned on the election of the swiss federal council that, generally speaking, the result of this procedure is that you tend to have candidates who are more, let’s say, in the middle, more moderate candidates who are elected from the various parties. So you don’t have the extremes because the system of election, as I said this preferential system of election that is very close to the so-called alternative vote system, sometimes called also instant runoff system and brings about more moderate politicians, which also can be seen as something positive So not having too many polarizing individuals within this federal council. And also in the course of the history of the federal council had as an indirect effect that the various parties started saying: okay well, we should pay attention to each other. We should find some kind of solution to distribute these seats because if there are some parties who resist the election of federal council, coming from another party then they know that when their turn arrives, somebody of their party should be elected, well you can have a backlash. From the other parties, if you have not behaved correctly, appropriately, let’s say, in the previous round… So, it’s a little bit complicated now to go into details but what happened is that gradually the swiss parliament did something that a typical parliament would not do, which means that parties that had the majority, they kind of voluntarily and gradually decided to leave some seats also to minorities. And so this… that happened first in 1891 when the first catholic conservative was elected, then there was a second catholic conservative elected then there was somebody from this party, that is now called Swiss People’s Party but at that time was mostly protestant and the party of more rural rural, let’s say, defending more rural interests, protestants and of small businessmen. And then during the Second World War the Social Democrats, that was the big step to include the left in the government or in this federal council in 1943, the first social democrat was integrated, until in 1959, you had a situation where you had four parties in this 7 member executive and that’s what the swiss then called the magic formula. the Zauberformel, in german the magic formula was kind of created in 1959 and it remained stable until 2003. So for many many decades you had the exact composition, exactly the same composition of the federal council with the two social democrats, two Christian Democrats, two liberals center right parties and one representative of what today is the Swiss People’s Party. And then in 2003 you had a change of this formula when this Christian Democrat, one of the two lost the seat and there was somebody, the leader, de facto leader of the Swiss People’s Party, Christoph Blocher who was elected in 2003 so there was a change of the formula but after and some years of, let’s say, a little bit more elastic, formal, I won’t go into details, still in 2015 you had ah again, a new magic formula that was kind of, you know, put into a place that consists of having two social democrats two liberals, right-wing liberals, two representatives of the Swiss People’s Party and one christian democrat so this is the current situation. But again, that’s not the only thing. There is also this way to informally and taking into account the diversity of Switzerland, that’s another interesting point that even though the federal council is elected by the joint session of two chambers of parliament, and even though the linguistic profile of these members of the federal assembly, the two chambers together is that you have about 70 to 75% who are german speakers and about 20% who are french speakers and not 5% who are italian speakers and a couple of them who are ramanche speakers. So even though the german speakers are an overwhelming majority, and even though the you know electoral system would allow them theoretically to always elect, let’s say, german speakers in the government in the federal council, this is something that never ever happened since 1848 actually, only once in the 19th century for a couple of years, you had six Swiss germans and one french speaker at that time but that, even that happened only once. Meaning that generally speaking, german speakers are 5, 4 at some point even only 3 out of 7. Even though, again, german speakers have the majority in the parliament. So this is something that is very important to stress. From my point of view it is of course a result of a given political culture that, you know, is not based on the idea of majority tyranny but you should integrate the minorities into the system. But also it’s something that is also connected to the way how the swiss federal council is elected, as I described before, and so yes, you have quite a fair balance of linguistic groups in the swiss federal council. And earlier when the protestant, catholic divide was very salient in swiss society and politics,  you also had some kind of informal “de facto” ensuring to catholics to have always at least 2 out of 7 members because catholics were a minority at that point and from the very beginning, 1848, you had usually always two catholics. At the beginning these were the liberal catholics not the conservative catholics, and later on also conservative catholics were also starting from 1891 integrated into the federal council.

Stephan Kyburz:
So I think these informal agreements also within parliament, when these elections happen and also this representation of the different regions, the languages and obviously mainly the parties also, is very important for the system to stay stable. I think an important step to making that system work better was also the introduction of proportional representation in 1919 which was kind of a precondition for that magic formula, I think, that emerged later. So the switch to proportional representation, better reflected the various parties and then in that process the main parties were finally also represented in the federal council and that brought that main stability right? But also as you write, I think, in your paper also, the smaller parties are also somehow included in this agreement because they support one or the other candidates right? So they essentially also joined these coalitions so that they tried to get more of their voices heard in the executive council right? But still the smaller parties are not yet represented, even though the parliament as a whole has… the parties have way more balanced vote shares. What is the reason that the small parties are not yet represented? And do you think it will happen eventually?

Nenad Stojanović:
Well, when you say small parties you probably think of the Green Party or the Green Liberal Party.

Stephan Kyburz:
Exactly.

Nenad Stojanović:
Well the thing here is that, first of all having only 7 members and again, the number 7 is written in the constitution since 1848, so it did not change since 1848 and having only 7 members means that one out of 7, if you look at the arithmetics, means a little bit less than 15%. So if you’re a very small party like having perhaps only 5% in parliament, it’s difficult for you to say we also want to be represented because you are too small given the number of seats. There were some attempts to reform the federal council and even recently to have 9 and not 7 members, precisely in order to have a little bit more flexibility and to be more open towards smaller parties. But the problem is rather of a different kind is that, when we speak about the Green Party, the Green Party in the last elections, the 2019 elections actually won around, if I remember correctly around 13% and and it is not represented in the federal council whereas the Christian Democrats who now have one seat, they have only around 11% and they still have one seat or, from the other point of view, the liberal, right-wing liberals the FDP in german or PLR in french and italian, they have 2 seats but only about 16% of the vote. And something actually similar applies also to Social Democrats who also have 2 seats and only slightly more seats in parliament.

Stephan Kyburz:
So there is this inertia, right, in these seats.

Nenad Stojanović:
Yes, so this is an open question, what will happen. Whether or not there will be a majority in the parliament to, let’s say, accept that a green party should also have a seat. Yes, but perhaps just to come back a little bit because I think this is important, we did not mention it, or just mentioned it en passant, is the impact of direct democracy. Because it is certainly true, what you said, the introduction of proportional representation in 1919 for the election of the first chamber of the parliament because the second always was elected by budgetarian rules, of course gave more seats to some political minorities, as Social Democrats, as Christian Democrats etc. So in a way prepared, as you said, the stage for the magic formula forty years later. But we should not forget that this inclusion of political minorities, as I already said, happened before the inclusion of Christian Conservatives, the Catholic Conservative Party happened in 1891. Well before proportional representation was introduced, the one major explanation for this is the role of direct democracy. Direct democracy meaning that the facultative referendum was introduced in 1874 and then the possibility to launch popular initiatives was in 1890 or 1891. But I think the decision was taken a little bit earlier but whatever… This had an important impact because the introduction of the facultative referendum 1874 meant that the Catholic conservative party that was not in the federal council at the time could challenge the decision taken by the liberal majority in parliament and in the federal council could challenge it by launching referendums. And that was important because it played, probably a major role, for this liberal majority to decide in as I said 1891 or 92…To to include one representative, Josef Zemp was his name of the catholic conservatives in the swiss federal council was once again this referendum menace as we call it, play the role because the liberal, or liberals flesh were a radical majority at the time, was aware that it might be better to have these conservative catholics in the system, integrated, rather than to have them outside of the government or outside of the federal council and have them challenge the decisions by using the referendum. So in a way, direct democracy played a major role to open up the swiss federal council, especially to the parties who were at that time in that position.

Stephan Kyburz:
So these different political institutions that also helped to make the federal council more representative, more inclusive over time, but it took a long time obviously. But also it led to stable government decisions.

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz:
So Nenad, thanks a lot for um, taking your time. I think we could discuss so many different issues. Also, the cantonal level would be super interesting, where you have some executive councils that are larger, like 9 members, who in some cases are popularly elected. So that would be, definitely, another interesting discussion. But for now do you have any books or articles that you would highly recommend to the audience that want to read up on on these topics, on the federal councils in particular.

Nenad Stojanović:
Well for those who read german there is a recent book by Adrian Vatter who is a professor of political science in Bern, that is a book called “Der Bundesrat”, which means the swiss… the federal counsel. So the whole book is dedicated to the federal council. But that’s in german. In english there is a book by Wolf Linder and Sean Mueller, I think called “Swiss Democracy” where you will find a very good chapter on the federal council or if I may suggest also my own book, that just came out last year for ECPR Press called “Multilingual Democracy: Switzerland and Beyond” where you will also find a lot of chapters dealing exclusively on the swiss federal council, the relationship with the parliament and also and especially this way how the multilingual aspect of Switzerland was integrated into the system. That was the reason for me to call the whole book “Multilingual Democracy”. How can democracy work if people speak different languages? That was for me always an interesting puzzle to explore and to analyze. And yeah I hope that interested readers will find some interesting insights in that book or in other books that I mentioned.

Stephan Kyburz:
Great! Thanks for sharing these recommendations and I had Sean Mueller also on the podcast already. So that was also an interesting discussion on power sharing institutions. So, yeah, for now, thanks a lot Nenad for taking your time. It was really an interesting discussion and of course I will include all your recommendations in the show notes. And yeah, hopefully we’ll have another discussion sometime in the future.

Nenad Stojanović:
Yeah, I also hope that there will be other discussions on similar topics and I look forward to listening to other topics in your podcast and I congratulate you for launching this very very interesting podcast and I wish you all the best.

Stephan Kyburz:
Cool. Thanks a lot.