ABSTRACT
Switzerland does not occupy a prominent place in comparative political economy. One reason is probably that this proudly independent country is not part of the eu and therefore missing from many comparative statistical sets. This relative neglect leads to a generally rather superficial knowledge about the peculiarities of the Swiss form of capitalism and the development of its welfare system. It also obscures a specific interesting question: how did Switzerland in the 1990s maintain its very high employment rate in the context of the lowest productivity and gdp growth in the oecd? Switzerland’s employment rate was essentially stable at 78.2 percent from 1990 through 2000, second only to tiny Iceland (oecd 2003a, p.298). In a very specific sense, this is also a ‘miracle’.
