“Stumbling” implementation: why are decisions taken in the national referendums in Switzerland not being implemented?

The article examines the problem of non-implementation, partial and misrepresented implementation of decisions taken in national referendums in Switzerland. The institution of referendums is a well-established part of the Swiss political process and is used to make various domestic and foreign policy decisions within the federation. Despite the country’s reputation as a “model” of direct democracy, the practice of recent decades has demonstrated a discrepancy between the will of voters and the resulting policies. The authors term this phenomenon of Swiss politics “stumbling implementation” and offer an explanation which is based on R. Matland’s policy implementation matrix consisting of four quadrants (administrative, political, experimental, and symbolic). The key criteria are the level of political conflict regarding the decision and the level of ambiguity about the goals and methods of implementation. An analysis of seven Swiss referendum cases using Matland's matrix revealed that political conflict and ambiguity about the goals and methods create bottlenecks in the implementation of referendum decisions. Depending on the specific balance of technical and political factors, “stumbling implementation” occurs. When the goals and objectives of implementation are unclear, a decision cannot be implemented, or its implementation differs from the original version. High levels of political conflict between the political elite and the electorate also lead to distorted implementation. When the will of voters does not coincide with the political goals of the authorities, the latter strive to implement the referendum decision in the form most favorable to national policy, even if such implementation leads to a distortion of the voters’ will.

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