Fast and Curious: ‘The Swiss Development Puzzle’. The Institutional Roots of the Success of Industrialization

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article investigates the institutional roots of the Swiss organized capitalism that contributed to the success of its industrialization and its subsequent economic growth during the second industrial revolution (1880–1913). Recent literature underlines the link between public and private actors and shows that the second industrial revolution in Switzerland owed its success to state-led organized capitalism. If the majority of studies analysed in detail one or more components of the Swiss organized capitalism, to our knowledge, there are no works seeking to explain the (institutional) construction of this organized capitalism by mobilizing a large number of factors in a single theoretical frame of reference. Using the Regulation Theory approach, this article sheds light on the institutional construction of the Swiss organized capitalism. We show that it rested on original institutional arrangements driven by the necessity to survive on external markets. We therefore demonstrate that these arrangements also enabled Switzerland to successfully deal with the production of essential public goods supporting both industrialization and national social bonds required to promote political unity.