Download or read book The Politics and Government of Switzerland written by C. Church and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics and Government of Switzerland is one of very few English language studies of contemporary Swiss politics. Drawing on recent research in Switzerland, and the author's own observations, it offers wide coverage of Swiss political forces, processes and policies. Church argues that Switzerland is actually a vibrant and pluralist polity, in which politics are increasingly competitive. However, it still retains some distinctive characteristics like direct democracy, which mean that the Swiss people play a larger role than in other countries.

Download or read book The Politics of Switzerland written by Hanspeter Kriesi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Switzerland's small size, its political system is one of the most complex and fascinating among contemporary democracies. The rich, complex mixture of centuries-old institutions and the refined political arrangements that exist today constitute a veritable laboratory for social scientists and their students. Often presented as the paradigmatic case of political integration, consensus democracy and multinational federalism, the Swiss model has become a benchmark case for analyses in comparative politics, political behaviour and other related fields. Written by two leading experts on Swiss politics, this book presents a definitive overview for scholars and students interested in Switzerland's political system at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By focusing on its intricacies but also taking in larger issues of general interest, the broad scope of this study will appeal to all those interested in contemporary European politics and democratic systems.

Download or read book Swiss Public Administration written by Andreas Ladner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This open access book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. The authors argue that Switzerland is an interesting case, from a theoretical, scientific and a more practice-oriented perspective. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.

Download or read book Switzerland in Europe written by Christine Trampusch and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-03-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides the first systematic overview of Swiss political economy in comparative perspective. It provides an analysis of major socio-economic institutions, economic actors, economic and social policies, and political institutions and their recent changes.

Download or read book Political Decision Making in Switzerland written by P. Sciarini and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This in-depth study of the decision-making processes of the early 2000s shows that the Swiss consensus democracy has changed considerably. Power relations have transformed, conflict has increased, coalitions have become more unstable and outputs less predictable. Yet these challenges to consensus politics provide opportunities for innovation.

Download or read book Political Change in Switzerland written by Clive Church and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Change in Switzerland explains the striking recent political developments in Switzerland, an important but surprisingly little known and often misunderstood country, aiming to dissipate prevailing myths about Switzerland in its European context. Firstly, the title provides an analysis of the way the practice and processes of Swiss politics have so dramatically changed over the last 25 years, setting out the differences between outside perceptions and changing Swiss realities. Secondly, it discusses how far the country has moved, from the stability of the post-war period to a new era of uncertainty, in which the so called Sonderfall, or special case, no longer seems to apply. In doing so it analyses the populist movement, centred on the Swiss People’s Party, examining its support and tactical operations, as well as the response of the establishment to the challenges the movement poses, both generally and where key questions of policy on foreigners and the EU are concerned. Finally, the title explains how much of this change is related to Europe, and discusses the prospects for Switzerland, Europe and the EU member states in the light of this new Swiss uncertainty. The way in which globalization has imposed new stresses on Switzerland, both in external policy and social terms, is the key theme of the title. These stresses have, in turn, encouraged the growth of a new populist movement, drawing on social classes previously supportive of other forces, and employing aggressive new tactics, creating a challenge that the establishment has found it hard to counter, so that stability has been compromised. As a result, Switzerland now faces two linked policy challenges, to find ways of accommodating unease about immigration and to devise a realistic and widely acceptable new relationship with the EU. The book’s underlying belief is that these changes have left the country divided and uncertain about its future. This title offers in-depth analysis of Switzerland's domestic and European politics and policies. It is also innovative in trying both to bring out the European roots of recent political changes in Switzerland and of the challenges these pose to the Swiss status quo and for the evolution of the EU and member states such as the United Kingdom. This is a book for those interested in Switzerland, academics, business people, diplomats, journalists and political commentators.

Download or read book Swiss Democracy written by Wolf Linder and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated third edition of this authoriative analysis of Swiss democracy, the institutions of federalism, and consensus democracy through political power sharing. Linder analyses the scope and limits of citizen's participation in direct democracy, which distinguishes Switzerland from most parliamentary systems.

Download or read book Swiss Federalism written by Adrian Vatter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The political and economic crisis of EU integration has made it increasingly apparent how challenging it is to bring together different sovereign cultures, languages and regions into a single political system. Switzerland – being one of the three classic federations in the world – can provide insights, particularly in relation to the accommodation of cultural, linguistic, religious and regional diversity, which can help tackle contemporary challenges. This book describes and analyses the characteristics, institutions, and processes of Swiss federalism, along with its combination of stability and change. It presents a comprehensive study of the federal system of Switzerland, where it comes from, how it operates, and the way it has changed of late. This will allow readers to appreciate the specific and current answers the Swiss case offers to the main questions raised by wider federal research. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students in federalism and territorial politics, political institutions, local and regional government studies, multi-level governance and more broadly to European and comparative politics.

Download or read book Direct Democracy in Switzerland written by Gregory Fossedal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only one country in the world--Switzerland--is a direct democracy, in which, to an extent, the people pass their own laws, judge the constitutionality of statutes, and even have written, in effect, their own constitution. In this propitious volume, Gregory Fossedal reports on the politics and social fabric of what James Bryce has called "the nation that has taken the democratic idea to its furthest extent." The lessons Fossedal presents, at a time of dissatisfaction with the role of money and privileged elites in many Western democracies, are at once timely and urgent.

Download or read book Swiss Monetary History since the Early 19th Century written by Ernst Baltensperger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the remarkable path which led to the Swiss Franc becoming the strong international currency that it is today. Ernst Baltensperger and Peter Kugler use Swiss monetary history to provide valuable insights into a number of issues concerning the organization and development of monetary institutions and currency that shaped the structure of financial markets and affected the economic course of a country in important ways. They investigate a number of topics, including the functioning of a world without a central bank, the role of competition and monopoly in money and banking, the functioning of monetary unions, monetary policy of small open economies under fixed and flexible exchange rates, the stability of money demand and supply under different monetary regimes, and the monetary and macroeconomic effects of Swiss Banking and Finance. Swiss Monetary History since the Early 19th Century illustrates the value of monetary history for understanding financial markets and macroeconomics today.

Download or read book Why Switzerland written by Jonathan Steinberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and completely updated edition of Jonathan Steinberg's classic account of Switzerland's unique political and economic system. Why Switzerland? examines the complicated voting system that allows citizens to add, strike out, or vote more than once for candidates, with extremely complicated systems of proportional representation; a collective and consensual executive leadership in both state and church; and the creation of the Swiss idea of citizenship, with tolerance of differences of language and religion, and a perfectionist bureaucracy which regulates the well-ordered society. This third edition tries to test the flexibility of the Swiss way of politics in the globalized world, social media, the huge expansion of money in world circulation and the vast tsunamis of capital which threaten to swamp it. Can the complex machinery that has maintained Swiss institutions for centuries survive globalization, neo-liberalism and mass migration from poor countries to rich ones?

Download or read book Economic Inequality and Political Representation in Switzerland written by Jan Rosset and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-25 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the link between economic and political inequalities and investigates the mechanisms that lead to economically rooted inequalities in the political representation of citizens’ policy preferences. Focusing on the case of Switzerland and evaluating data from the post-electoral survey, Selects 2007, the author demonstrates that the policy preferences of members of the Federal Assembly best reflect those of rich citizens. This pattern is explained by differential levels of political participation and knowledge across income groups, party finance, the fact that representatives tend to come from higher economic strata, and the failure of the party-system structure to reflect the complexity of policy preferences among citizens.

Download or read book Singapore And Switzerland Secrets To Small State Success written by Yvonne Guo and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cases of Singapore and Switzerland present a fascinating puzzle: how have two small states achieved similar levels of success through divergent pathways? Are both approaches equally sustainable, and what lessons do they hold for each other? While Singapore is the archetypal developmental state, whose success can be attributed to strong political leadership and long-term planning, Switzerland's success is a more organic process, due to the propitious convergence of strong industries and a resilient citizenry. Yet throughout the course of their development, both countries have had to deal with the dual challenges of culturally heterogeneous populations and challenging regional contexts. Edited by Yvonne Guo and Jun Jie Woo, with forewords from Ambassadors Thomas Kupfer and Tommy Koh, Singapore and Switzerland: Secrets to Small State Success features contributions from distinguished scholars and policymakers who explore the dynamics of two small states which have topped international rankings in a dazzling array of policy areas, from economic competitiveness to education to governance, but whose pathways to success could not be more different.

Download or read book The Good Society written by Henrik Christoffersen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denmark and Switzerland are small and successful countries with exceptionally content populations. However, they have very different political institutions and economic models. They have followed the general tendency in the West toward economic convergence, but both countries have managed to stay on top. They both have a strong liberal tradition, but otherwise their economic strategies are a welfare state model for Denmark and a safe haven model for Switzerland. The Danish welfare state is tax-based, while the expenditures for social welfare are insurance-based in Switzerland. The political institutions are a multiparty unicameral system in Denmark, and a permanent coalition system with many referenda and strong local government in Switzerland. Both approaches have managed to ensure smoothly working political power-sharing and economic systems that allocate resources in a fairly efficient way. To date, they have also managed to adapt the economies to changes in the external environment with a combination of stability and flexibility.

Download or read book Direct Democracy Practices at the Local Level written by Premat, Christophe Emmanuel and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2022-02-18 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Direct democracy, or pure democracy, is a concept spreading throughout the world, now adopted by nearly 30 countries on the national level. While the concept is not new, it is important to investigate the current benefits or hinderances of direct democracy related to local governments so that they may be implemented further. Direct Democracy Practices at the Local Level deepens the knowledge of direct democracy in political science. This book explores how local governments utilize these instruments in international governments and analyzes a series of popular initiatives and local referenda to how successful these initiatives are. Covering topics such as religious rights, street committees, and climate change, this book is essential for political science students and professors, policymakers, faculty, local governments, academicians, and researchers in political science with an interest in direct democracy procedures in representative systems.

Download or read book The Republican Alternative written by André Holenstein and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Republican Alternative seeks to move beyond the mere notion of scholarly inquiry into the republic—the subject of recent rediscovery by political historians interested in Europe’s intellectual heritage—by investigating the practical similarities and differences between two early modern republics, as well as their self-images and interactions during the turbulent seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the world’s most economically successful societies, Switzerland and the Netherlands laid much of the foundation for their prosperity during the early modern period discussed here. This volume attempts to clarify the special character of these two countries as they developed, including issues of religious plurality, the republican form of government, and an increasingly commercially-driven agrarian society.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Capital Cities written by Heike Mayer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capital cities that are not the dominant economic centers of their nations – so-called ‘secondary capital cities’ (SCCs) – tend to be overlooked in the fields of economic geography and political science. Yet, capital cities play an important role in shaping the political, economic, social and cultural identity of a nation. As the seat of power and decision-making, capital cities represent a nation’s identity not only through their symbolic architecture but also through their economies and through the ways in which they position themselves in national urban networks. The Political Economy of Capital Cities aims to address this gap by presenting the dynamics that influence policy and economic development in four in-depth case studies examining the SCCs of Bern, Ottawa, The Hague and Washington, D.C. In contrast to traditional accounts of capital cities, this book conceptualizes the modern national capital as an innovation-driven economy influenced by national, local and regional actors. Nationally, overarching trends in the direction of outsourcing and tertiarization of the public-sector influence the fate of capital cities. Regional policymakers in all four of the highlighted cities leverage the presence of national government agencies and stimulate the economy by way of various locational policy strategies. While accounting for their secondary status, this book illustrates how capital-city actors such as firms, national, regional and local governments, policymakers and planning practitioners are keenly aware of the unique status of their city. The conclusion provides practical recommendations for policymakers in SCCs and highlights ways in which they can help to promote economic development.