Switzerland's trouble with political bipolarism
Switzerland is confronted with growing dissatisfaction over it's political structures and processes. Traditional decisionmaking by popular referendum on legislation passed through the federal parliament and/or popular vote on initiatives has proved to bring on efficient and sustainable results with respect to economic wisdom, but legislation on important subjects such as reform of the health care system or social security has lagged behind recent political, economic and demographic changes.
The cause for this slowdown of the political process lies principally in the interferences between the range of action and of responsibilities of local (cantonal) and federal legislation which systematically dilute the responsibility on both levels of government. The so-called concordance government formed by the four major parties which has become polarized by the presence of very outspoken representatives of the left (foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey from the Social Democrats)and the right(minister of justice Christoph Blocher of the Swiss People's Party) within the seven member federal government. There is no formal coalition contract between the parties which participate in the government, but a shaky consensus on major subjects which allows the key players to criticize their colleagues in an increasingly rude way. The Pan-European trend towards a bipolar politial landscape has not helped most European countries because of the narrrow majorities that can be won under the specific conditions which differ from the American modal of bipolarism which is centered on the person of the president. As a result, coalition governments of the type of Germany's actual "Grosse Koalition" become major roadblocks to political action and legislatory reform. The Swiss system has worked well as long as the members of the government refrained from political activism and concentrated their effort on the task of managing their ministries without interfering with others (in Swiss terminology "departments") of extremely divers dimensions: e.g. the relatively small and lean department of Justice and the enormous department of the Interior which has to deal with social security, health care and culture).
With growing mediocracy, the visibility of government members has dramatically increased over the last few years, and their narcissistic performance has stirred up a public debate over which one of the government members is the weakest - i.e. the one with the lowest number of public statements and appearances.
Justice minister Christoph Blocher, an entrepreneur turned politician with an extremely nationalist credo seasoned with talk of market economy and liberalism,
would like to lead the political right toward bipolarism but his poisonous and vulgar rhetoric is not suited for audiences that adhere to more open concepts of state and nation, on the other hand. The political left, on the other hand, tries to monopolize
social subjects as well as an open-minded foreign policy and to lure the liberal electorate into it's centralist, interventionist camp.
The "Freie Demokratische Partei" FDP, heirs of the founding fathers of the modern federal state in mid 19th century, are desperately seeking to get away from a chronically low profile and dwindling electorate.
Since the members of the government are not eo ipso the formal or informal leaders of their respective parties (exception: People's Party Christoph Blocher), and are
elected by the two chambers of parliament according to a formula which respects proportions of relative strength of their parties- the so-called "Zauberformel" or magician's formula), the results of the 2007 elections will probably see a great debate about bipolarism and a new form of concordance and/or coalition, with an uncertain issue.
Most probably, voters will force parliament to make tough decisions on the composition of the government in terms of party representation and of human resources. One of the consequences will be that Switzerland, despite the nationalistic rhetoric of the People's Party, will resemble more to other European democracies than to itself.