ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the level of globalization affected Switzerland in four ways: general economic difficulties, pressures on the Swiss financial sector, social problems and, new population movements. In the 1990s Swiss banks were caught up by globalization so as to take advantage of the Big Bang and move into the Anglo-Saxon investment banking. In the 1990s Swiss social security changed greatly as it made up for its earlier reticences, the country catching up with European norms and becoming a real welfare state, albeit one which was still relatively limited, as well as both highly federal and dependent on the private sector. One particularly important cause of such societal concerns was the way in which globalization changed patterns of migration into Switzerland. The Sonderfalls reliance on exemplary economic prosperity and social harmony was thus clearly shaken by the way the growing influence of external developments, and their internal ramifications, changed from the late 1980s onwards.
