Parliament

Abstract

The chapter on the Swiss parliament offers an introduction of the institutional characteristics and functioning of the National Council and the Council of States, the two parliamentary chambers of the Swiss parliament. It elaborates how the Swiss parliamentarians are elected and discusses the composition and functions of this parliament. The specificities of this system, characterized by two equally powerful chambers, part-time national parliamentarians, very few administrative resources, and a lack of transparency in party and campaign financing, are outlined and explained in detail. In addition, the chapter measures the power of the Swiss parliament with an institutional power index based on its formal rights and compares the result with qualitative estimates of parliamentary and political experts to provide an encompassing estimate of the power of parliament. As two key developments that are particularly characteristic for this parliament in recent years, the increase in professionalization and the growing influence of interest groups and how they impact the Federal Assembly are discussed.