Major entrepreneurs played a direct role in building the federal state born in 1848. These economic figures subsequently became rarer, often giving way to the leaders of employers' associations. An evolution that has left its mark.
There aren't many business leaders in the Swiss Parliament. The harshness of economic life, the need to conquer new and sometimes distant markets, and the accumulation of technical standards are enough to dampen the political ardor of entrepreneurs, condemned to devote all their time to their companies. The bosses of major groups have ended up deserting the halls of parliament, especially as they are now deprived of the prestige that public office once offered.
While such figures can still be spotted in the corridors of the Federal Parliament, the last representatives of a company to play a leading role in our country's economy were the PLR Johann Schneider-Ammann, Federal Councillor from 2010 to 2018, and the UDC Peter Spuhler, until 2012, Christoph Blocher, in 2014, as well as the latter's daughter, Magdalena Martello-Blocher, still in office in the Lower House, joined at the last general election by the PLR National Councillor from Solothurn, Simon Michel. But it wasn't always so.
Entrepreneurs at the cradle of the young federal state
The modern Switzerland that emerged from the Federal Constitution of 1848 was largely shaped by large-scale entrepreneurs. Some would immediately add that it was also built for them. This is not entirely untrue, although it needs to be qualified. Entrepreneurs, in a well-understood application of the militia system, played an active part in setting up the young federal state. They gave shape to the liberal Switzerland its progenitors had hoped for, in the conviction - widely shared among the radical victors of the Sonderbund - that only a «light» federal state could foster the growth of a Confederation enamored of individualist and federalist values.
With the Swiss rail network stagnating before 1848, it was Zurich-born Alfred Escher who kick-started its construction. The law he had passed by the Federal Chambers in 1852 established a compromise between the private sector, which he defended along with the statist but anti-centralist Radicals of the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the Bernese Jakob Stämpfli, who favored a network run and managed by the federal government. Companies were founded, raising the colossal funds needed to build the lines, which in turn depended on concessions issued by the cantons. In just a few years, backed by an extremely dense network, Switzerland caught up with other countries, then surpassed them.
At the same time, Basel bankers like Achilles Bischoff helped the Federal Council organize its monetary policy. All in all, Swiss captains of industry were strongly represented in the chambers, favored by a majority electoral system free of any «bad» surprises, and were to function as advisors to a Federal Council supported by a lymphatic administration. Not that this situation didn't give rise to serious problems. As boss of the North-East Company, founder of Credit Suisse and Rentenanstalt, and originator of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ), which supplied the engineers the railways needed, Escher found himself at the center of a formidable political and economic machine, which acquired a position of strength in Berne.
His industrialist and banker friends, often linked to railway interests, were not by chance nicknamed the «rail barons». Holding more than half the members of parliament in their web, separated from the «historic» radicals and now organized as a liberal center, they had a decisive influence in the elections for the seven Wise Men. This ultimately provoked the ire of the other components of hegemonic radicalism. The French-speaking Radicals broke their alliance with them in 1855, and it was against Escher's friends in particular that the democrat movement was formed in northern Switzerland in the 1860s. In 1869, the movement gained a foothold in Zurich. Nevertheless, from this time onwards, when there were still many businessmen in Parliament, cooperation between business and the federal authorities took other paths.
The emergence of economic umbrella organizations
In 1870, the Swiss Union of Commerce and Industry, known as the Vorort, was born, and seven years later, crafts and small businesses organized themselves under the name of the Swiss Union of Arts and Crafts (USAM). The introduction of the optional legislative referendum into the Federal Constitution in 1874 was soon to transform the role of business circles, albeit gradually. At the time, political conflicts were still marked by the hatred between Catholic conservatives and secular radicals, with the Liberal Center acting as arbitrator. Against this backdrop, the Vorort provided the Federal Council with expert reports and statistics, and together with its directors, including Konrad Cramer-Frey, supported the government in negotiations on trade agreements, particularly in an increasingly protectionist atmosphere, stimulated since 1873 by a stubborn economic crisis. The Federal Council set up a workers' secretariat, at a time when the social question, supported by strikes, was taking precedence over the religious question.
Between the end of the 19thth century and the early years of the following century saw the emergence of a trend that would come to full fruition after the First World War. Leaving general economic issues such as energy and trade policy to the Vorort, the business world strengthened its organization with the creation of the Central Union of Swiss Employers« Associations (UCAPS) in 1908, under the auspices of the great industrialist Eduard Sulzer-Ziegler, who had openly social ambitions but was fiercely anti-union. This was to be known as the »Verwirtschaftlichung" of politics, i.e. the definitive affirmation of the economic question. From 1918, it was fuelled by the stagnation caused by the war, by the traumatic Bolshevik victory in Russia, and by the existential questions that a destabilized bourgeoisie was beginning to ask itself.
Against this backdrop of political and economic gloom, business circles began to distance themselves from political life. From then on, they acted through their employers« organizations, with the support of relay parliamentarians, or became direct interlocutors with the Federal Council. While they supported the bourgeois parties in battles such as the so-called »crisis initiative" launched by the left, which included a rich array of state interventions in the economy but was narrowly defeated in 1936, they played a central role in the drafting of the "Labor Peace", signed the following year - albeit initially against their will.
Faced with the global economic crisis that began to intensify in Switzerland in the early 1930s, the trade unions, which had dismissed the revolutionary aspirations of the Socialist Party, approached the association of the machine and watch industries with a proposal for an arrangement designed to stabilize the country's economic and social life, which was being harassed by the crisis.
La Paix du travail and its effects
Initially reluctant to make a pact with the unionist «devil», the watchmaking employers were forced to do so by the Federal Council, which threatened to interfere directly in social dialogue. Labor peace« was born. It made strikes the last resort in the event of industrial disputes, before stimulating the development of collective agreements after 1945. It was from this date onwards that the role of business organizations in direct-democratic processes really took off. They were already widely consulted on draft legislation, but their central role in shaping it was formalized and systematized in 1947, the year in which the Swiss people adopted not only old-age and survivors» insurance (AVS), the pillar of the Swiss-style welfare state, but also the economic articles of the Constitution. In addition to approving a series of state interventions in certain areas, the latter validated the obligation to consult employers and unions within the framework of consultation procedures also intended to limit the risk of referendums.
However, the business world did not break its ties with the parliamentary arena. They did, however, change in nature. Entrepreneurs, especially small ones, did not disappear, even if the economy was mostly represented by board members who had not necessarily worked as company directors. The era of corporate lawyers began, and they shone in their ability to list their directorships like Leporello unrolls the catalog of his master Don Giovanni's mistresses, or, given the provenance of some of them, like believers unravelling their rosary beads.
Parallel to this was the era of professional association staffers, who accompanied the last parliamentary journalists, such as Willy Bretscher, editor-in-chief of the NZZ. There had already been some, like the Vorort director Alfred Frey at the end of the 19th centuryth century, Ernst Wetter, elected Federal Councillor in 1940, and Walther Stampfli, Director of the Solothurn Canton Industrial Association and «father» of the AVS. But the trend became more widespread.
Otto Fischer was a member of the Bernese National Council and director of the Swiss Union of Arts and Crafts. A member of the right wing of the Radicals, he formed an alliance with Christoph Blocher against the United Nations Organization (UNO) in 1987. Other prominent figures include Richard Reich, Director of the Société de développement de l'économie suisse (SDES), founded in 1943 and the «armed wing of the economy», Heinz Allenspach, Director of UCAPS, and Pierre Triponez, Director of USAM since 2000.
This organization gradually felt a greater need to be closer to Parliament, and systematically chose its presidents here. And the last remaining entrepreneurs in Berne don't see themselves as the heirs of their 19th-century predecessors.th century. So, while Blocher, like the others, pursued his own interests, he was hardly in the habit of putting himself at the service of the government. On the contrary, he was one of its most virulent opponents. However, despite his own contradictions linked to his isolationist stance, his party tended to replace the Radicals as the representative of business interests.
A pernicious evolution
This increasingly marginal presence of entrepreneurs at the pinnacle of politics is indicative of a development that is not without its problems. It's not that the monopolization of seats by «rail barons», old or new, has always gone smoothly. The risks of conflicts of interest have not always been eliminated. But their absence reflects the major changes that have been taking place at the helm of major companies since the 1990s. Of course, the demands of time absorb all their energy. Nevertheless, a new generation of CEOs is emerging, often with an Anglo-Saxon background and not always familiar with the relatively consensual Swiss political mores.
A similar phenomenon can be observed in trade unions, which are sometimes led by leaders trained in the French school, hardly renowned for its moderation. We need to be vigilant about these developments. The presence of big businessmen in Parliament has the merit of making their reality better understood by a political world that tends to live for itself, and, if we look back over history, we can see that it has been rather beneficial to the country. In this sense, the merger between Vorort and SDES in 2000 contributed to a possibly regrettable estrangement between the two spheres.
Olivier Meuwly is a historian, specializing in 19th century. He is the author of numerous essays on direct democracy, liberalism and Swiss political parties.
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