Communal Democracy and Liberal Democracy: An Outside Friend's Look at the Swiss Political Tradition

Abstract

This article offers a brief overview of the history of Swiss communal liberty. The author traces the development of key concepts and practices, especially the use of covenant, that were employed to strengthen and expand the federation. The author then explains how the cultural background of the peoples that settled Switzerland contributed to the formation of the polity. In a comparative analysis between liberal democracy and communal democracy, the author notes that the struggle to synthesize the conflict between the theories and practices of these two forms of democracy has been at the heart of Swiss politics for the last 200 years.