So who's next? After the failed trials of Pennsylvania, Uruguay, Ukraine and Yugoslavia, who's next to try a directorial leadership? Cause the Helvètes, and maybe as well the Bosnians, are sick of being at odds with everybody. Why only does the collegial executive style work in Switzerland but not in other countries? Why oh why. Are we so in love with eachother?
We aren't united when it comes to the European question. The Romands or the left would love to join the European Union and only the Swiss Germans or the center-right block, who is in a majority, prevent them from doing so. Maybe if the Romands would be in a majority, they would also act more responsible and refuse to give up sovereignty. It's a difficult question. If the European Commission would be headed by a council and if there would be popular rights to veto legislation and right to submit initiatives, the question would look a whole differently. But that's not today's Europe. It's an Europe that is at odds with Swiss values. And so the risks outweigh the benefits. This might change, to be seen.
But why think big. There are European countries that could adopt a directorial executive already today. The Netherland's government works almost like a collegial council, the Belgians could unite all languages in a federal council, the Catalans could be included in a federal council in Madrid, the Germans could finally build a Jamaica coalition, etc. And i don't think such governments would be doomed to fail. Those countries are educated and civilized enough to handle complex state matters in a collegial way. They just have to try.
And it could help. European countries are still not out of the debt crisis. Climate change, aging of the people, youth unemployment, immigration, themes that occupy well today's governments. And in the bi-polar debate culture in the parliaments nerves get lost and the debate level suffers. Being extreme gets votes these days. The wish for change, for the destruction of the establishment is successful as well on the right as well on the left. This weakens the center, the compromise makers and makes it very difficult to find political solutions. Rather the debate culture gets toxic.
Sure in Switzerland the conservative and racist rightwing party is the biggest party. But it doesn't hold a majority but is only a minority in a coalition government together with the left and the center right parties. So its might is rather small compared to what powers this party would have in a presidential system where they could have won the most votes and build a government and wreck total havoc such. It's too easy. A whole bunch of African countries is experiencing exactly that downside of presidential democracies. Once in power it's impossible to stop a determined president. It takes an uprising, a confrontation, deaths, to stop a corrupt leader in a monopolar political environment.
In Switzerland a leader who wants to corrupt the country is un-elected after four years by the majority in parliament, divisive leaders aren't welcomed at the head of the central administration, a highly technocratic job that doesn't allow for much abuse. The parliament expects a constructive attitude from the councilors so that they can bring about laws and regulations able to win a majority in popular votes.
And that is maybe so distinctive to Switzerland, the compromise searching attitude. Are other people not having the same mindset allowing them to be governed by a council? Do they really need a strong president? Isn't it a sign of maturity that you don't need a powerful leader but that you can live in the doubt that rules with the seven wise? Former federal councils in other countries got dissolved by civil war or autocratic rulers. It takes a strong parliament able to reign in a renegade councilor. The army has to have no interest in implementing autocratic rule or in fighting eachother in a civil war.
The Swiss escaped autocratic rule by establishing a confederation of independent states and never had a King nor strong centralized presidency of the strong leader. The church had its tyrannic presence and aristocrat we were for a long time : I don't want to nostalgize about the good life of my ancestors. That is a certain freedom was there in comparison to other European subjects to medieval Kings ; a specific ability to decide autonomously of the Helvètes existed and more and more cantons joined over the years up to today's Switzerland. All that unites them, is the will to not be subject to the rule of a far distant King respectively his vassal or imposed president, be it from Germany, France or Austria. The experience to have been lethally mislead into the harsh winter too many times by the vassal's venerable ignorant intelligence lead to the deep wisdom that locals, especially the elder, ( still ) know always better than a bureaucracy a thousand miles away. An attitude, intelligence, culture or character-trait as you find it still in Switzerland these days and not just here, it seems to me rather an universal human trait to think such. Yet with powerful multinational enterprises from banks such as UBS and Credit Suisse, over companies such as Roche, Nestle and Glencore, Holcim, ABB or Swiss Re, to the presence of the UN in Geneva or the headquarters of the FIFA in Zurich : you don't grow up these days in Switzerland told a strong central bureaucracy is doomed to fail. It's an unanswered question depending on your private goals and so what the Helvètes can agree is or are more proud of, is their direct democracy rather than the lack of a strong leader, of a King ( which would be a fact that allows easily and rapidly for direct democracy in the first place, I could pretend ).
And so in the meantime, the Swiss can't imagine losing their popular voting rights again, nor initiatives and surely not referenda. It's that forced closeness to the people that is often cited as a reason for today's Swiss Federal Council to work properly. The elected leaders know they are accountable in front of the people, that the people has the last word. This creates pressure on parliament to elect rather wise leaders who don't cost votes at the federal elections and who can bring about compromises. A councilor turned renegade can maybe raise with populism some votes, but it will never be enough for breaking support in our federal parliament. And so the other parties, suspicious, can refuse such a federal minister to be re-elected at which point the populism of the pretend-to-be-rebel loses traction. At least, that's what happened "under my watch" at the turning into this century.
Switzerland is quite small, maybe why this works as well, at least that's what's being said. I don't think size determines whether a collegial council can work. It's the attitude of the controlling parliament that matters and for that it's crucial to have fair and transparent elections. In Switzerland it took the liberal party more than fifty years to give up powers, also thanks to the majority voting system. They ruled the country for a fairly long time. But maybe somehow in the fact of how we got rid of royal rule, since hence the rule of the people lies at the heart of Helvetic democracy and so the vote of the population is and has always been highly respected, as if it would be something holy.
This is different to countries where the people is seen only as a means to the end or so it seems. Where it is supposed that you can control a people and have it decide for you by misleading it, as you can, all powerful as they are, those presidents, have always been or are in the meantime. Be it in Russia or China, to name the obvious ones, the people seems manipulated to serve the elite who has no shame in exploiting the poor. Which is an act that wants to be learned and not be failed, yet generations change, the dynasties they stay. The Swiss elite isn't better, modern and manipulable as humans they are, yet with the popular rights to submit initiatives, a party can create enough pressure on the establishment to move on or lose it all. The government is such often forced to offer compromises respectively is prevented from moving into a direction that isn't supported by the majority - thanks or due to the popular referendum - at least until an idea for a project or law is supported by at least half the population, at which point or point at which : it is a compromise.
So is it direct democracy that was missing in Uruguay and in Yugoslavia and in post-revolutionary France that allows a directorial executive to strive and bring stability and freedom? Maybe. I think with a strong parliament, renegade or elitistic populist councilors can be reigned in. Not sure. I wouldn't want to miss the citizens' rights to veto legislation nor the right to bring about initiatives by our own will and determination, wisdom and wit. It doesn't mean absolutistically though - I guess - that a nation, who is willing to discuss the shared rule of a collegial council, might at the same time have to see themselves willing for direct democracy.
We don't want to exclude those nations, who are concerned about the unity in their diverse countries and can see in the collegial approach a solution to more equality, and refuse them such the lucky fate of the Helvètes who after the civil war in 1848 were also ruled without referenda nor initiatives on federal level for the beginning.
Inshallah ! as some would say.
