Building a Multicultural Society by Political Integration

Abstract

This chapter explains how, despite the absence of single ethnic culture, Swiss state- and nation-building was possible. Neither the Swiss nation, nor the Swiss society existed when modern Switzerland was founded in 1848, after a brief civil war. The chapter provides a reading of Swiss history since then as one of gradually achieving the participation of the most important minority groups and the different social classes through proportional representation. Beginning with the losers of the civil war, the Catholic-Conservatives, followed by Protestant farmers and the petite bourgeoise, and ending with the Social-Democrats, the Swiss thus invented the ‘magic formula’ in 1959 for proportionally sharing the seven seats in the federal government. Even the rise of right-wing populism since the 1990s has not changed this basic feature.