Competitors in Consensual Democracy: Intraparty Competition and the Open-List System in Swiss Post-War Politics (1940-1980s)

Does the existence of power-sharing agreements between parties, such as the “magic formula” applied to the composition of the Swiss government between 1959 and 2003, preclude other forms of competition next to interparty competition? Swiss elections of the first post-war decades are characterized by an extraordinary electoral stability and it is therefore often assumed that they took place in the same spirit of consensus that flowed through the Swiss institutions at the time. The electoral system for the National Council (lower chamber) yet allows voters extensive possibilities to change the party lists and therefore adds a dynamic of personal competition into the elections. Through the analysis of archival material (meeting minutes, leaflets, adds…), this paper ambitions to show how political actors – parties, candidates, but also non-party actors – have taken the open-list system into account in their campaigning strategies throughout the first post-war decades. The longitudinal scope of this research as well as comparisons between three cantons of different sizes shall allow to relate these strategies to varying sociopolitical configurations. In particular, the recurring conflicts surrounding the “personal” campaigns of candidates reveal how marginalized actors used the open-list system to influence elections outside of the intraparty selection process. Whereas economic organizations in particular had long enjoyed a dominant role in the selection and promotion of candidates, new social movements recommended their own candidates from the 1960s onwards in order to push their leaders and their agenda in mainstream political parties. The open-list system thus gave them leeway to enter the field of institutional politics.