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The Oxford Handbook of Swiss Politics

Patrick Emmenegger is a professor of comparative political economy and public policy at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland. His research focuses on the political economy of welfare and skills, labour market regulation, industrial relations, democratization, state-building, the politics of taxation, and institutional theory. He has published The Age of Dualization: The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies (2012, Oxford University Press) and The Power to Dismiss: Trade Unions and the Regulation of Job Security in Western Europe (2014, Oxford University Press).

Flavia Fossati is an assistant professor of inequality and integration studies at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (CIR-LIVES). Previously, she has been appointed as an assistant professor of social policy at the University of Vienna. She has been a visiting fellow at EUI and Malmö University. Her research interests include social and immigration policies, deservingness and welfare state chauvinism, and survey experiments. Her research is published in, among others, Cambridge University Press , European Sociological Review , Socio-Economic Review , and International Migration Review . More information can be found here: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9218-5422.

Silja Häusermann is a professor of political science at the University of Zurich. She studies welfare state politics and party system change in advanced capitalist democracies. She directs the ERC project, ‘welfarepriorities’ and is the co-director of the UZH University Research Priority Programme ‘Equality of Opportunity’. She is the co-editor of The Politics of Advanced Capitalism (Cambridge University Press 2015) and The World Politics of Social Investment Vols I and II (Oxford University Press 2022). More information can be found here: www.siljahaeusermann.org.

Yannis Papadopoulos is a professor of Swiss politics and public policy at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Lausanne and a member of the Laboratory for Analysis and Public Policy (LAGAPE). His research concentrates on recent developments in Swiss policy-making and on the broader implications of governance transformations for accountability and democracy. He has recently published Understanding Accountability in Democratic Governance (Elements series in Public policy, Cambridge University Press 2023) and co-edited the Handbuch der Schweizer Politik-Manuel de la politique suisse (NZZ Libro 2022).

Pascal Sciarini is a professor of Swiss and comparative politics and dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Geneva. His main research topics are decision-making processes, direct democracy, Europeanization, and electoral behaviour. His work has appeared in several journals, such as Comparative Political Studies, The Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Electoral Studies, and Social Networks . He is co-author of Political Decision-Making in Switzerland: The Consensus Model under Pressure (Palgrave Macmillan 2015).

Adrian Vatter is a full professor of political science (Swiss politics) at the Institute of Political Science, University of Bern. He studied political science and economics at the University of Bern and was professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany (2003–2007) and at the University of Zurich (2008–2009). He has published on Swiss politics, federalism, direct democracy, consensus democracy, subnational politics, and comparative public policy in leading journals. He is the author of Swiss Federalism (Routledge 2018) and Power Diffusion and Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2019; co-authored with Julian Bernauer).

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The Oxford Handbook of Swiss Politics provides a comprehensive analysis of the many different facets of the Swiss political system and of the major developments in modern Swiss politics. Its breadth offers analyses relevant not only to political science but also to international relations, European studies, history, sociology, law, and economics. The volume brings together a diverse set of more than fifty leading experts in their respective areas, who explore Switzerland’s distinctive and sometimes intriguing policies and politics at all levels and across many themes. They firmly place them in an international and comparative context and in conversation with the broader scholarly literature. Therefore, this edited collection provides a necessary corrective to the often rather idealized and sometimes outdated perception of Swiss politics. The edited volume presents an account of Swiss politics that recognizes its inherent diversity by taking a thematic approach in seven sections, an introduction, and an epilogue. However, by presenting new arguments, insights, and data, all chapters also make contributions in their own right. The seven sections are foundations (Chapters 2 to 7), institutions (Chapters 8 to 12), cantons and municipalities (Chapters 13 to 15), actors (Chapters 16 to 20), elections and votes (Chapters 21 to 23), decision-making processes (Chapters 24 and 25), public policies (Chapters 26 to 40); and three concluding chapters compose the epilogue (Chapters 41 to 43).

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Switzerland, Public Policy in

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 24 May 2023
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• Frédéric Varone 4 &
• Karin Ingold 5 , 6  

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Introduction

Three peculiarities of the Swiss political system must be considered when assessing the institutional venues in which policymaking occurs and the resources and effective power of different policy stakeholders. First, direct democracy instruments allow policy actors to put a new policy issue on the political agenda (by launching a popular initiative) and to veto a policy solution that was enacted by the parliament (by calling for an ex post referendum). Second, Switzerland is characterized by strong federalism: the subnational entities (cantons) can co-determine the formulation of federal policies and, furthermore, have significant manoeuvrability when implementing these policies. In addition, cantons have important policy competences in several areas, including health care, public order and security, or education. They also negotiate hundreds of inter-cantonal agreements to address tax and finance, research, or cultural issues. Third, the Federal Assembly (i.e. Swiss...

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Afonso, A., & Maggetti, M. (2007). Bilaterals II: Reaching the limits of the Swiss third way. In C. Church (Ed.), Switzerland and the European Union: A close, contradictory and misunderstood relationship . Routledge.

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Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Frédéric Varone

Institute of Political Science and Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Karin Ingold

Environmental Social Science Department Eawag, Zurich, Switzerland

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Varone, F., Ingold, K. (2023). Switzerland, Public Policy in. In: van Gerven, M., Rothmayr Allison, C., Schubert, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Public Policy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90434-0_54-1

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Published : 24 May 2023

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Swiss Policy Research

Geopolitics and Media

The Media Navigator (2024)

The Media Navigator classifies 72 leading media outlets based on their political stance and their establishment bias. In many cases, the latter is more significant.

The Media Navigator has been developed based on an in-depth analysis of news coverage, commentary, media ownership and financing. There is also a  German edition available.

Direct links to media outlets

• Liberal establishment: CNN / The Daily Beast / VICE News / MSNBC / VOX  / The Guardian / The Washington Post / Politico / Wikipedia
• Liberal intermediate : The Young Turks /  Mother Jones /  Jacobin / The Intercept / AlterNet / Democracy Now! / The Nation / TruthOut / The Real News Network
• Liberal independent : WSWS / The Canary / The Grayzone / Counterpunch / Jimmy Dore Show / Mint Press News / CovertAction Magazine / Declassified UK / offGuardian
• Center establishment :  The New York Times /  CBS News / ABC News / BBC News / The Financial Times / The Hill / TIME Magazine / The Economist / USA Today
• Center independent : Global Research / Moon of Alabama / Corbett Report /  Unlimited Hangout /  The Cradle / Last American Vagabond / 21st Century Wire /  Consortium News / Voltaire Network
• Conservative establishment : Wall Street Journal / Telegraph (UK) / Daily Mail / New York Post / Washington Times / Spectator / Fox News / National Review / Washington Examiner
• Conservative intermediate : American Conservative / Epoch Times / UnHerd / Townhall / Daily Wire / Revolver News / Daily Caller / Breitbart News / Gateway Pundit
• Conservative independent : UK Column /  SOTT / Anti War / Zero Hedge / Winter Watch /  Lew Rockwell / VT Foreign Policy / Information Liberation /  The Unz Review

Internet search engines

The following internet search engines use their own search index. On many controversial topics, these search engines provide very different suggestions and results. Most other search engines rely on results provided by Microsoft Bing (e.g. DuckDuckGo and Qwant) or Google (e.g. Startpage). To access the full range of media sources, a search engine other than Google has to be used.

1 : Google (USA) – 2 : Bing (Microsoft) – 3 : Brave (USA) – 4 : Mojeek (UK) – 5 : Yandex (Russia) – 6 : Petal (Huawei/China) – 7 : eTools (Swiss meta search engine). More : The Search Engine Map .

Video Platforms

Well-known video platforms include YouTube (Google/USA), Rumble (USA), Odysee (USA), BitChute (UK), Dailymotion (France), Vimeo (USA), and the Internet Archive (USA). To access the full range of video sources, platforms other than YouTube have to be used.

MIT Project: Improve the News

Based in part on the SPR Media Navigator, an MIT research group led by professor Max Tegmark has developed an online app called Improve the News that allows readers to filter and compare news based on the political bias and the establishment bias of media outlets. Their own machine learning algorithm confirmed that these are indeed the two most important dimensions of media bias.

• Advanced Online Media Use
• Wikipedia and Propaganda
• The CIA and the Media

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