Contested Representation. Swiss Political Parties in Post-war Election Campaigns

The current debate on ‘post-democracy’ or the ‘crisis of representation’ in Western European democracies often draws on comparisons with a more representative, and hence more legitimate and stable democratic order. This article aims to peer into the black box of representation in the age of ‘party democracy’ by examining processes and claims around representation in post-war Swiss election campaigns – thereby building upon but also nuancing Bernard Manin’s theorisation of the ‘representative government’. Through an analysis of federal election campaigns after 1945 up until the 1980s, this article reveals profound tensions and conflicts over questions of representation. In spite of the mythologisation of a particularly horizontal democracy, parties had to deal with the growing contradictions resulting from the expectation to have both ‘ordinary’ and yet particularly competent politicians. Moreover, despite the perception of clear-cut sectoral representation, Swiss voters were, from early on, the targets of multiple representative claims coming from parties and other actors. These two contradictions were particularly exposed from the 1960s onwards, as Swiss election campaigns, while still producing stable election results, were marked by a widespread critique of representation, which forced parties to reinvent the ways in which they addressed voters.