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Comparative Politics and Government

Notes parliamentary custom, but they are created outside of these to regulate political conduct that
the statutes etc.
• The most important features of the revised Constitution of 1874 should, however, be traced
in strengthening the hold of the Federal Government. It not only increased the control of the
Centre over armed forces, it also provided for the nationalisation of the railways under
federal ownership and causing legislation to be referred to the entire Swiss people not as
inhabitants of certain cantons but as a single, unified Court of Appeal.
• The executive is singular as it is headed by one person whether he is a President or a Prime
Minister and the like. But the Federal Council of Switzerland is a unique model of collegial
or plural presidency. It has seven members (ministers) and all of them are designated as the
‘Presidents’.
• Modern democracy is known as ‘representative government’. Power resides in the people,
but it is exercised by the deputies chosen by the voters in periodic elections who are said to
be accountable to their electors.
• The Founding Fathers of the American Constitution visualised that future situations would
need a change in the constitutional provisions and thus they provided Article V which reads:
“The Congress whenever two-thirds of both houses shall propose amendments to this
Constitution, or on the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States,
shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all
intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of the
three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions by three-fourths thereof as the one or
the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment
which may be made prior to the year one thousand, eight hundred and eight, shall in any
manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no
State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”
• The Congress has the power of getting the work of ratification done either by the legislatures
nd
of Slates, or it may provide for special conventions there. In the case of 22 amendment of
1951 the work of ratification in the States was done not by the legislatures but by special
conventions.
• The process of amending the Constitution has been described in Chapter III of the Constitution
of 1874 as amended in 1891. The distinctively peculiar thing in this direction is that the
Constitution may be subjected to two types of revisions partial or total and in each case a
different procedure has to be adopted.
• The proposal of amending the Constitution in full may come from the National Council or
the Council of States, each House approving of it in a separate resolution. If the two Houses
of the Federal Assembly approve of it, it is submitted to the people for their verdict at the
polls. If it is approved by a majority of Swiss voters, it comes into force.
• In the Swiss constitutional system nothing is more instructive to a student of comparative
governments than the institutions of direct democracy – initiative and referendum. They are
perhaps the most remarkable agencies that democracy has produced, for they afford the
channel of direct legislation by the people.
• The device of initiative is important in cases of constitutional amendments. In this direction,
it is of two types – formulated and non-formulated or in general terms. When the demand of
the voters is contained in the shape of a draft or in specific terms, the Federal Assembly
accepts it for the approval of the people and of the cantons. If the voters send a general
demand giving outline only, then it is the obligation of the legislature to draft, consider and
pass the laws as desired by the required number of citizens subject to the ratification of the
people.
• Political, economic and social changes have played their important part. The expansion of
territory, growth of population, increasing fields of science and technology etc. all have
advanced America from the position of a small and isolated nation with simple and agricultural

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