ABSTRACT
Swiss populism embraces increasing personalization, mediatization and charismatic leadership. Christoph Blocher has emerged as the archetypical voice of the Swiss, the only politician trusted by the people. The new stress on direct democracy has been both cause and effect of changes in the Swiss media. Indeed, Swiss politics are now very much played out in the media. On the one hand, there has been something of a return to the party press of yesteryear with the Swiss People's Party (SVP) seeking to control a series of titles. On the other hand, both the regular press and the new free press, of which the country has four, two in German and one each in French and Italian, have begun to play an enlarged, commercially driven political role. In the 1990s longer-term domestic dynamics came together to produce not inconsiderable changes to the structures of Swiss politics, altering the framework within which the politics of opposition to internationalization had to play out.
