ABSTRACT
The citizens of Switzerland have several opportunities to participate in the constitution-making process. Since 1848, any constitutional provision can only enter into force if the ‘sovereign’, which is the simple majority of the voters (at that time, male Swiss citizens) and of the cantons (majority of the voters) approve the new constitutional provision. According to the new constitution of 1848, 1 although 50,000 citizens were given the opportunity to require a revision of the constitution, there was no mention of the content of the revision. For this and probably other reasons, Swiss citizens seldom used these new political rights of direct democracy. 2
In 1891, the sovereign adopted two important additional possibilities for amending the constitution. The most important object of this revision was the possibility of changing the constitution using a specifi c text submitted via a popular initiative. If adopted by the sovereign, the proposed text automatically became, and would still become today, part of the constitution. The other possibility was proposing general guidelines as a ‘motion’ to parliament to edit a new constitutional amendment to correspond with the guidelines of the popular initiative. As a consequence of this proposal, parliament was only competent to elaborate a fi nal text for the approval of the sovereign. If parliament agreed with these guidelines, it had to propose the specifi c text for the amendment to the sovereign. If it refused to do so, the majority of the people had to decide on the proposal. If the majority of the people agreed with the guidelines formulated by the popular initiative, parliament had to establish a specifi c constitutional bill and propose it as an amendment for fi nal approval by the sovereign. 3
Opposed to the initial project proposed by the federal council (the executive of Switzerland), the second chamber, that is, the state councillors of parliament, proposed giving citizens a new and very important political right. In fact, the majority of the cantonal councillors wanted to introduce a specifi c democratic right for citizens to be able to amend the constitution by using a particular text. As a consequence, the second chamber required the federal council to submit to parliament an additional constitutional proposal for the real improvement of direct democracy.
