Steiner Jurg - Amicable Agreement Versus Majority Rule

Switzerland presents a microcosm of Europe: linguistic and religious diversities, regional contrasts in economic growth and in settlement patterns, stubbornly defended pockets of autonomy in a system of increasing interdependence and accelerated interdependence.

For all these reasons every serious study of the politics of Switzerland is a contribution to the study of the political structure of Europe. This goes for historical and institutional studies: it applies with even greater force to a systematic theoretical study such as Jrg Steiners. A number of descriptive studies have given us solid bodies of information about parts of the Swiss political system: Jrg Steiners is the first formal analysis of the crucial variables of the system, the first theory-oriented case study of Switzerland. One may quarrel with a number of hypotheses in this formal presentation and wish for a fuller exposition of the interlinkages among the variables: what is important is that Jrg Steiner has made this first attempt at a systematization of the available evidence for this one country. Other political scientists may prefer to present their analyses in a more conventional literary form: what is important is that Jrg Steiner has developed a scheme of variables and hypotheses which will inspire parallel case studies for other countries and possibly even direct cross-national comparisons.

As a theoretical case study Steiners work poses problems of research strategy surprisingly similar to those raised by Harry Ecksteins controversial study of my own country, Norway: how can we know where a country stands on the different variables without comparing it with another or others? What can we conclude from a single configuration of values on the given set of variables? Steiner grapples valiantly with these problems and shows how far it is possible to move in an in-depth study of a single country. He has one great advantage over Eckstein: even if he can adduce only very few and superficial comparisons with other countries of Europe he can compare the cantons with each other. Switzerland offers extraordinary opportunities for such intracountry comparisons and Steiner points to a number of concrete possibilities of this type. There is every reason to hope that he will push on further in this direction in the years to come. In developing my model for the explanation of variations in the growth of mass politics within western Europe I have again and again been struck by the possibilities of transposing the model to the level of the Swiss cantons. In reading Jrg Steiners book I have again been struck by these isomorphisms: Switzerland is a microcosm of Europe and anyone seeking to understand the structure and the dynamics of European politics will do well to immerse himself in this study by Jrg Steiner, both in the data and the evidence he has pulled together and in the general framework he has tried to construct.

STEIN ROKKAN

Yale University

New Haven, Conn.

March, 1970

S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970).