Swiss Politics

Back in November you may have heard about the Swiss voting on a referendum to ban minarets. If not, here’s an article from the Globe and Mail about it. I have been working on an article about Swiss politics and kind of about this issue, but since I just found a video of Jon Stewart explaining the whole thing (while validating the Goodwin law, although perhaps a bit justified in this case), I might as well just post that:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Oliver's Travels - Switzerland
www.thedailyshow.com
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As well, since there are some similarities to Canada, here are five facts about the the political system here.

1. Switzerland is composed of 26 cantons which are somewhat similar to provinces (although they seem to have much more say over issues within their respective jurisdictions).

A map of the 26 cantons (20 full cantons and 6 half cantons) of Switzerland

2. The Federal Council constitutes the federal government, and serves as a collective Head of State.

3. There are two houses of the federal legislature, the upper (Council of States) has 48 members with 2 from each canton and one from each half-canton and the lower house (National Council) which has 200 members based on proportional representation across the country and based on population of each canton.

4. There are a lot of political parties (about 18), but only 5 that actually garner any significant amount of votes and stats in the legislature: SVP – Swiss People’s Party, SP – Social Democrat Party, FDP – The Liberals, CVP – Christian Democratic People’s Party and the GPS – Green Party.

5. Switzerland is basically the closest country to a direct democracy in the world. Citizens can force referenda on any issue in the constitution (100,000 signatures within 18 months) and may challenge any law passed by the federal parliament (collect 50,000 signatures within 100 days of law being passed).