IKMAS Webinar 4/2021

Ethnic Power-Sharing and Cross-Ethnic Vote in Switzerland: Challenging The Consociational View

Nov 26, 2021 | 3:30pm – 5.00pm(KualaLumpur)

Register: shorturl.at/lpKOZ
(After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.)

Abstract

Switzerland is the most linguistically diverse European country and a prime example of successful ethnic power-sharing. In all linguistically mixed cantons, as well as at the national level, the executives are composed of politicians belonging to at least two different language groups. All cantonal executives are elected directly by voters, via a majoritarian (plurality) electoral system, and the levels of cross-ethnic voting behavior are quite high. These facts have been largely overlooked in the mainstream literature that has typically – but erroneously – considered Switzerland a prime example of “consociational” democracy.

Bio

Nenad Stojanović is a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor
of Political Science at the University of Geneva. His research focus is
on democracy in multicultural societies, currently with an emphasis on direct democracy, populism, and deliberative mini-publics. His recent work was published or is forthcoming in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Political Behavior, International Political Science Review, and European Political Science Review. He is the author of Multilingual Democracy: Switzerland and Beyond (ECPR Press, 2021).