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This first chapter provides the contextual framework indispensable for an understanding of Swiss public administration. It starts with a brief look at the bottom-up genesis of the Swiss nation-state and its subsequent expansion through a transfer of competencies from the cantons to the national level. It also highlights the country’s heterogeneity in terms of economic performance, religion, and language and the efforts needed to keep the country together. In a next step, the chapter presents the Swiss state model which falls in-between the Nordic welfare state model and a liberal minimal state. This gives a more accurate picture of the low ratio of government expenditure to GDP. Federalism, direct democracy, and a system of ‘concordance’ are the three cornerstones of the Swiss political system, and all three are based on the principle of power-sharing, and they prevent competencies in decision-making and finances from becoming too concentrated.

This chapter discusses how the provision of tasks and services is organized in Switzerland. Starting historically only with military expenditures and subsidies for cantonal projects, the federal level subsequently expanded into policies such as infrastructure and transportation projects, as well as guiding the expansion of the welfare state. More recently, federal decision-makers and administrators have engaged in economic and environmental policy-making. Subsidiarity and fiscal equivalence are the guiding principles when it comes to allocating tasks to the three levels of government. Nevertheless, there is a high degree of cooperation between these levels, as well as among the cantons and the communities, or between the state and the private sector. Increasing governmental responsibilities and the importance of the various actors in fulfilling tasks is mirrored in their finances and financing modes. This is all the more significant because each level in Switzerland has its own sources of income and must pay for its own expenditures.

This chapter is devoted to the characteristics of the Swiss administrations at all three levels, the Confederation, the cantons, and the cities or communities. It addresses the composition of the public sector through the legal forms its employees work under. The highest number of public administration employees is found at the cantonal level, followed by employees in entities under public law. The chapter also shows how the administrations at all three levels are organized and addresses uniquely Swiss characteristics, including that hardly any civil servants have permanent employment status, the dependence on non-professional and part-time politicians and experts, and how multilingualism is handled. It ends by comparing the Swiss administrative system to other administrative traditions and concludes that Switzerland has opted for a hybrid solution.

In describing the two central aspects of law and the principle of legality, this chapter underscores how both formal and material laws are part of the Swiss legal system. It also introduces the concepts of legislation and the hierarchy of norms. Swiss law is not limited to written laws but also includes unwritten principles and case law. All these elements stress how pervasive legal aspects are in today’s policies. Law is the basis of state action, but law also limits such action.

In Switzerland, the federal administration has developed expertise in the elaboration of federal laws. Such expertise has been gradually codified, first in specific guides and then in federal laws. After a chronological presentation of the different steps in the pre-parliamentary phase, the chapter then discusses the limits to, and accessibility of, the numerous documents involved. The elaborate preliminary procedures supposedly increase the quality of the law and contribute to the gradual construction of a political consensus. Issues of vertical power are concealed behind these well-established procedures, and they are inversely proportional to the hierarchical position of the public officials in charge. Such power is also unequally distributed between the different offices.

With the expansion of international cooperation, Switzerland, like other countries, has developed a set of specific instruments to integrate international law into domestic law. Nevertheless, direct democracy lends a distinctive aspect to the Swiss legal system. The object of the chapter is to show how the Swiss federal administration plays a role in maintaining a balance—as far as possible—between two poles: direct democracy and respect for international law. The two instruments of direct democracy, the referendum and the popular initiative, are analysed in the light of their influence on the signature, ratification and implementation of international treaties. The distribution of roles and competencies put in place within the administration demonstrates a sophisticated institutional engineering in terms of treaty ratification.

Classically, instruments of state action are laws, decisions, and contracts. Such acts are characterized by their legally binding nature. This chapter shows how administrative activity is not exhausted by such legal acts and uses other instruments, commonly defined as ‘soft law’, to increase the efficiency of public action. Such instruments complement traditional administrative activity and are today a key component of public policy. Focusing on the Swiss example, this chapter looks into the difficulties state action through soft law poses, by describing the forms it can take, the legal effects it (potentially) generates, its effectiveness, and the instruments to guarantee its legitimacy.

This chapter deals with the Swiss judicial system. It first describes the organization of this system, which is strongly marked by the federal character of Switzerland (so there is pronounced judicial federalism). The philosophy of the system at the federal level is presented, and judicial organization of the cantons is briefly described. The chapter then describes the Swiss system of judicial review (control of the constitutionality of the laws and other state acts), a system which is relatively complete and extended. Yet at the same time, it has a notable exception in international comparison: Switzerland lacks judicial review of federal laws and international law.

In 2017, the Swiss Confederation introduced a new management model (known as NMG) to better manage the federal administration and facilitate steering at all levels. It is worth understanding this model better, how it is applied in practice, and to consider whether it can inspire new ways of managing the public sector. Will the NMG become the “Swiss way of management” in the public sector? To answer this question, we first look at the GMEB model, a precursor to the NMG. We then describe the peculiarities of the NMG, and in what manner it is “new” compared with other Swiss and foreign approaches; here we introduce the “public performance diamond”. Finally, we examine the case of Swiss Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo), an office which was both a pioneer in adopting the GMEB model and one of the first to use the new NMG mode.

This chapter describes the transition of the Swiss public sector in its efforts to establish a digital ecosystem. The goals are to make public services centered on the needs of citizens and businesses more efficient, to reduce the costs of administration and improve its operations, and—arguably—to create a ‘smart government’ using emerging technologies which can benefit from the digitalization of services.