ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Switzerland profiles of longstanding democracies and of the European Union, and provides essential detail on history, electoral system, political parties and cleavages, and governments. Switzerland as a polity remained confederal. Switzerland is strongly bicameral, and the 26 Swiss cantons have considerable autonomy. An ideologically similar party was the Liberal Party of Switzerland, which was a long-standing French Protestant bourgeois party, particularly strong in Geneva. The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland was founded in 1870, and it is the only major left-wing party in Switzerland. Switzerland is obviously not unique in having Green parties, but it may well be in once having an explicitly “anti-Green” party. As Switzerland considered closer relations with the European Union in the 1990s, the Swiss People’s Party/UDC adopted a more militant protectionist and isolationist stance under the controversial leadership of Christoph Blocher.
