Discours à l’Université d’Oxford (Blavatnik School of Government) : « Boring can be good »

Dear Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, dear professor Woods,

Dear members of the faculty and of the advisory board,

Dear students,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you very much for your invitation. And many thanks for the wonderful dinner last night.

It is an honour and a pleasure to speak at your renowned university about Switzerland, inequality and other challenges to our democracies.

Albert Einstein once said: “If the world were to end I’d prefer to be in Switzerland – Everything happens five years later there.”

Indeed, some things do happen very slowly in Switzerland.

That can be seen by the example of mandatory health insurance.

During the Second World War, and influenced by the ideas of William Beveridge – who also studied here at Oxford – there were growing calls in Switzerland too for a system of national insurance.

But only in 1994 was such an insurance introduced in Switzerland. After several rejected proposals. And not 5 years but almost 50 years after the creation of the National Health Service in the UK. So you see: even Einstein got things wrong occasionally…

Ladies and gentlemen,

How is it that a country like Switzerland – which always holds one of the top spots in global competitiveness and innovation rankings – how is it that Switzerland can be THAT slow when it comes to taking democratic decisions?

Well, slowness does not just come naturally to Switzerland – in fact, it takes a great deal of effort to be slow.

When Oscar Wilde travelled to Switzerland in 1899, he noted about the Swiss in a letter to a friend: “cattle have more expression.” His insult is praise to our ears. We work very hard to be that boring!

The BBC recently named Zurich as one of the world’s leading cities in terms of quality of life; while also stating that it was ‘boring’!

And how about Geneva with its international reputation? Here too the harsh verdict was: ‘deadly dull’!

But boring can be good.

Stability is boring, but stability is GOOD. Continuity may be boring, but GOOD. Reliability is GOOD. For a country as well as for the international system.

Today, in certain countries, people would be quite happy if politics was that bit more boring…

The special thing about Switzerland is that global market forces collide with a system of direct democracy. That is unique.

Switzerland is more heavily affected by globalisation than many other countries – with all the opportunities and risks that this entails.

We have benefitted enormously from globalisation. A recent study shows: the largest average income gains since 1990 are found in Switzerland. Ahead of Japan and Finland.

My country is also heavily europeanised. Only Belgium and Ireland are more deeply integrated into the EU than Switzerland – even though we are not a member of the club.

This incredible level of European integration is also evident in the fact that we have a higher level of immigration than most EU member states, and one of the highest foreign populations at around 25 per cent.

That is highly enriching – culturally as well as economically. We must be very clear about this point: without the foreign labour force, many of our industries would not function as well – or not function at all, such as the public health sector.

Which also means that everybody has to compete for jobs against a huge pool of talent.

So it therefore comes as no surprise that there are occasional strains in how Switzerland sees itself. Equally, it is no surprise that questions of national identity, belonging and integration are also the subject of heated debate at times.

It is no surprise that this creates a certain unease about globalisation and europeanisation.

This unease, ladies and gentlemen, this unease can manifest itself very quickly and very directly through the ballot box.

In Switzerland we bring out the ballot boxes four times a year. On all three state levels.

At federal level, every law is subject to either an optional or a compulsory referendum. For an optional referendum you need 50,000 signatures. With 100,000 signatures, you can submit an initiative to amend the constitution. There are 5.4 million eligible voters in Switzerland by the way.

And we vote on pretty much everything: on pre-implantation diagnostics and unconditional basic income; on banning animal experimentation and second homes; on the Cash Cow Initiative and the Horned Cow Initiative.

The Cash Cow Initiative was about car drivers, who don’t want to be cash cows when it comes to financing public transport. And the Horned Cow Initiative is about real cows with real horns. At the end of November, we will be voting on whether farmers should receive financial support for horn-bearing cows and goats.

I’m not telling you all this to make fun of our democracy. I am a big fan of our political system.

In a direct democracy, everything is up for debate and I love to debate.

We have already fixed the next 64 dates for votes and elections – until 2034.

Direct democracy is a continual debate. Not just because we vote so frequently, but because we discuss every bill intensely before it is submitted to parliament.

Every bill is first sent out for consultation. This gives everybody – business associations, civil society, political parties – the opportunity to express their views.

Afterwards the amended bill is submitted to the first chamber and then to the second chamber in our bicameral system.

This process of consultation, heated debate and compromise is the DNA of Switzerland’s political system. We discuss every bill in view of a possible popular vote and making it acceptable for a majority.

And that way feelings of resentment have less chance of growing to the point where they can easily succumb to propaganda.

In Switzerland we have learned to question motives, identify hidden agendas and distinguish between arguments, which stand up to rational scrutiny – and ‘fake news’.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that ‘fake news’ couldn’t be spread in Switzerland.

But it is more difficult because everything is discussed intensively.

Switzerland’s system of direct democracy acts as an early warning system. We try systematically to decode and defuse any public unease.

And today this decoding has become a vital question for democracies.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our processes may slow things down, but they guarantee ordered dispute. And thus stabilise our political system.

The social stability we enjoy is in no small part thanks to our political culture; the fact that since 1943 the four biggest parties are represented in our government and that the presidency changes every year.

Today a social democrat stands before you. Last year it would have been a member of a centrist party (in German called “Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei”, in French “Le Parti démocrate-chrétien”). Next year it will be my colleague from a conservative party, furthest to the right in our political spectrum (in German called “Schweizerische Volkspartei”, in French “L’Union démocratique du centre”).

Yes, we are a stable country, but nonetheless we are continually in motion.

Our boring political system is actually quite exciting! It enables us to know the people’s concerns and expectations. And to find compromises.

It enables us to find a common denominator, big enough for our country to function, but small enough for everybody to live according to their own ideas.

Direct democracy in Switzerland means continually working on our social, cultural and economic cohesion. For example with a pension system, in which around 90 per cent of people in Switzerland draw more from the old age pension fund than they paid in. Or with an excellent system of vocational education and training. A highly permeable system, accessible to all, that enables young people to enter the labour market.

But our early warning system is no autopilot. There have been moments when we didn’t listen carefully enough. Switzerland also had its Brexit moment.

In 2014 a vote was held on an initiative against mass immigration. It called for Switzerland to “take back control” of immigration. The slogan may sound familiar.

The initiative was adopted by a very narrow margin (50.3%) and questioned fundamentally a long history of bilateral relations with the European Union, our most important political and economic partner.

This bilateral approach was a result of another vote: in 1992 the Swiss said ‘No’ to joining the European Economic Area (EEA) (50.3%). Subsequently, Switzerland concluded bilateral sectoral agreements with the European Union. These agreements were accepted in two popular votes in 2000 (67.2%) and 2005 (54.6%). Today there are more than 120 agreements between Switzerland and the EU.

Part of this bilateral approach involved opening our labour market to 500 million Europeans. As well as introducing measures to ensure that foreign companies respect our usual conditions of employment. This is crucial for Switzerland as our labour market offers the highest wages in Europe. With correspondingly high prices of course.

The implementation of the initiative against mass immigration was very challenging. It called for immigration quotas.

But we did not want to compromise the free movement of persons and the bilateral treaties with the European Union. In the end, parliament found a way to implement the initiative without violating the treaties with the EU. And no referendum was sought against the implementation measures.

The initiative showed that in my country two visions of Switzerland run into one another: that of an open, interconnected country versus one that is closed.

And the next vote is just around the corner:

At the end of November, we not only vote on cow horns. We will also be voting on the so-called ‘self-determination initiative’. This vote too risks having an impact on Switzerland’s relationship with the world. The question is one of whether Swiss law should take precedent over international law.

Ladies and gentlemen,

An early warning system – maybe that’s what was lacking in certain countries in recent years.

That was evident in 2016.

Today, the situation seems to have calmed somewhat. The global economy is currently booming. But we should not be complacent.

I quote from the global competitiveness report the World Economic Forum published ten days ago:

“Uneven distribution of the benefits of economic progress, generational divides, rising income inequality in advanced economies, and increasing environmental degradation have heightened the sense that the economic policies of past years have not served citizens or society well.”

Which means: the lesson of the past couple of years is clear and is still valid today: the average voter has to feel that society is treating him fairly – otherwise he will manifest his anger through the ballot box.

There is only one way of defusing this unease. And that is through a policy of social inclusion – through education opportunities, an enabling welfare state and a taxation policy that provides for investment in social cohesion.

What does it take for a country to be fair and at the same time competitive in the long term? Stability and functioning state institutions. Good infrastructure. An education system geared towards innovation. And above all: equal opportunities.

Equal opportunities that allow society to harness the potential of the whole population, and not just a fraction of it.

It’s quite obvious really: the better the education opportunities available, the greater a country’s innovative capacity; the stronger the role of women in the labour market, the stronger a country’s economic performance.

Inequality will play an even more important role in the future. Inequality leads not just to worse outcomes for the poor, but for everybody.

We know that those states with smaller gaps between rich and poor fare significantly better than those with marked social divides – for example in terms of physical and mental health, level of education, wellbeing of our children, life expectancy or problems such as crime, violence or drug consumption.

Growing disparities in income and wealth pose a threat to the global economy.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I come from a country with four national languages and 26 cantons. Diversity in Switzerland is almost as complicated as our political system: the cantons are really like small states, which function almost autonomously for example in matters of taxation, education or police. So Switzerland is a small state, consisting of 26 smaller states. Which in turn consist of 2,222 communities. And if you take a 20-minute train ride, you’ll hear a different dialect. How many dialects do we have? We don’t really know. We only know: we produce 450 different sorts of cheeses…

Due to our cultural diversity and our system of direct democracy, we HAVE TO take an interest in one another.

This is a rare privilege. We have to try to put ourselves in the minds of others. And that also means: having to make compromises.

Direct democracy obliges us to have political empathy.

But above all, for every political decision we take, we have to consider what it means for the weakest in society, and if it will create losers.

Whether or not they are absolute or relative losers, is politically irrelevant.

We must not forget the most important lesson of the optimistic post-war decades: it is by strengthening others, that we strengthen ourselves.

Nobody needs to lose for you to win. That is the deal of politics.

The world is not a zero-sum game.

Thank you.