Switzerland¶
The Swiss cases show stigma put directly to the voters, with no government needed to carry it. Direct democracy lets a ban on an association reach the ballot through signatures alone, and the voters have been the brake, backed in the worst cases by a constitutional limit on initiatives that breach international law. The safeguard is applied anew at each vote and depends on a majority choosing it.
The clerk’s briefs¶
From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes
Read these, for the file that keeps ending well. Associations and minorities targeted by an initiative must win a national campaign to stay lawful, and the cost of that campaign falls on them. Anyone with money, at home or abroad, can fund the next initiative, and a well-funded one can shift opinion. The constitutional limit guards against the worst; below it, protection depends on each majority holding.
September 2026: Neutrality declined¶
On 27 September 2026 all cantons and 70.2 per cent of voters rejected the neutrality initiative. Article 139 of the constitution requires the Federal Assembly to declare invalid an initiative that “infringes mandatory provisions of international law”. The clerks note that the brake worked again, by ballot, as it did in 1937.
November 1937: The voters decline¶
On 28 November 1937 Swiss voters rejected a popular initiative to ban Freemasonry, launched in 1934 by Arthur Fonjallaz, a fascist colonel from Lausanne. It would have banned the lodges, the Odd Fellows, the Union society and all “similar and affiliated” societies. Its supporters said the lodges were in the hands of the Jews, hostile to the state and supporters of Bolshevism. The Federal Council found no evidence for any of it. Shortly before the vote, files from the trial of the National Front’s treasurer, Boris Todtli, leaked and showed the Frontists’ close ties to Nazi Germany. The initiative won 31.3 per cent; Fribourg was the only canton to accept it. The clerks note that the charge of foreign loyalty came back on the people making it, by way of an archive.