The Swiss Consensus Democracy In Transition(1995—2015)

In his innovative study,Lijphart carried out the theory of Consensus Democracy.Since then Switzerland has been seen as "the clearest prototype" of a consensus model.Following the considerable political upheaval during 1995-2015,however,democracy in Switzerland was experiencing a transition in which compromise and consensus,the two dominated traditional concepts in Swiss politics,are challenged by the growing polarization of the Swiss party system as well as more pluralist features displayed in interest group system.The gain in seats of big right-wing populist parties such as the SVP worsened the competitive relations between the right and left-wing camp.Growing conflicts together with the weakened consensus lead to a shift in e ite behavior.Drawing on Lijphart’s theoretical concept of consensus democracy,an analysis of the transformation of Swiss democracy during the period of 1995-2015 was made based on the introduction of Swiss social root and its political model,which reveals that the European integration process,weakened pre-parliamentary phase,pluralism in interest groups and the development of digital democracy can be counted as the four main triggers to a growing polarization within parliament and government.However,although Switzerland has experienced numerous challenges in the past decades,it continues to display institutional elements of power sharing and core features of consensus model such as multi-party coalition,bottom-up federalism,Proportional representation and veto right given to the minority.Besides,from an international comparative perspective,Switzerland still represents a stronger consensus state than the other continental European negotiating democracies.Facing a new round of Europeanization and globalization,consensus democracy might have been weakened,but the present analysis clearly demonstrates that the Swiss democracy is by no means about to shift to classical majoritarian democracy.Instead,it is apparent that during the period of 1995-2015,Switzerland is on the way to shifting from an extreme special case to a more moderate consensus democracy.