Politics of Switzerland

The politics of Switzerland take place in the framework of a multi-party federal directorial democratic republic, whereby the Federal Council of Switzerland is the collective head of government and head of state. Executive power is exercised by the government and the federal administration and is not concentrated in any one person. Federal legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Switzerland is the closest state in the world to a direct democracy. For any change in the constitution, a referendum is mandatory (mandatory referendum); for any change in a law, a referendum can be requested (optional referendum). Through referenda, citizens may challenge any law voted by federal parliament and through federal popular initiative introduce amendments to the federal constitution.

The same system is used for the three administrative levels municipality, canton, country. If the community is small enough like in little villages, the parliament representing the people does not exist. Also the ordinary law does then not exist, only the constitution of the village. The term "council" is used ambiguously, sometimes it refers to legislation, i.e. parliament, sometimes to the execution, i.e. government.

Switzerland

Switzerland (/ˈswɪtsərlənd/), officially the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a country in Europe. While still named the "Swiss Confederation" for historical reasons, modern Switzerland is a federal directorial republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities, called Bundesstadt ("federal city"). The country is situated in Western and Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global and economic centres, Zürich and Geneva.

The establishment of the Swiss Confederation is traditionally dated to 1 August 1291, which is celebrated annually as the Swiss National Day. The country has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. Nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to numerous international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association, but notably it is not part of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area. However the country does participate in the Schengen Area and the EU's single market through a number of bilateral treaties.

Switzerland (software)

Switzerland is an open source network-monitoring utility developed and released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Its goal is to monitor network traffic between two systems running the program to see if the user's internet service provider is violating network neutrality, like Comcast does with the BitTorrent protocol.

Switzerland was featured in the Technology section of an issue of New Scientist in August 2008.

See also

References

External links

Switzerland (disambiguation)

Switzerland is a country in Europe.

Switzerland may also refer to: