Iimagine for a moment being in Switzerland… The government of Bern announces its intention to carry out a very controversial reform. The Federal Assembly, after several weeks of debate, votes the reform. Are the Swiss taking to the streets? Does transport stop working? Is the public sector going on strike? Is economic activity paralyzed during increasingly violent days of repeated mobilization? Nothing of the sort.
A simple collection of signatures is launched to demand a referendum against the new law. All federal laws can be the subject of a request for a referendum-veto within a period of one hundred days after their official publication, and only 50,000 voter signatures, or approximately 1% of the Swiss electorate, are required to that this succeeds.
This is precisely what happened about a month ago… on pensions. A right-wing majority in the Swiss Parliament voted on March 17 a law which will lead to a reduction in funded pensions for employees. While the inter-union called that day, in France, for a tenth day of mobilization, the left and the Swiss unions launched, on March 28, a campaign of signatures for a referendum against this law entitled “No to the reduction of pensions BVG [loi fédérale sur la prévoyance professionnelle vieillesse, survivants et invalidité] ! Pay more, get less! »
Many referendums fail to reject a law (about two-thirds since 2000) and even more are avoided, with the vast majority of laws coming into force without a popular vote. The Swiss government in fact proceeds, upstream of the legislative process, with vast consultations to reach a form of consensus and minimize the risk of a referendum or of being rejected at the ballot box. Such is the indirect effect of the referendum-veto on the Swiss system: its introduction into the Federal Constitution of 1874 generated an intense practice of consultation in the preparatory phase of laws, which will become, after the Second World War, a real institutionalized model. of social consultation, enshrined since 1999 in article 147 of the Constitution.
Very uncertain outlet
This model, also supported by proportional representation, is called “democracy of concordance”. Like any weapon, the referendum weapon therefore acts by its sole threat, or deterrent force, by discouraging legislative action disconnected from the electorate. In political science, the referendum seems to institutionalize conflicts. In other words, it channels them by integrating them into an institutional game linking representative democracy, social democracy and direct democracy.
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