ABSTRACT
Globalization has refined Swiss economic structures and performance. It has also altered the nature and significance of one of Europe's largest foreign populations. And the restructuring of the world political economy has forced Switzerland both to review its international role and to seek new relations with the European Union, undermining the comfortable and stable assumptions of the Sonderfall. Globalization has refined Swiss economic structures and performance. Economically Switzerland has had to cope with a rapidly rising population and increasing, and different, patterns of migration. Jonathan Steinberg used to hold Switzerland up as a model of a different form of governance, superior to that prevailing in the EU, though his position seems much more nuanced in 2015. Switzerland is more a model for other Eurosceptic parties than an example of a settled and successful arms-length relationship with the EU. After all it has the biggest and best organized populist party in Europe.
