HEARD ABOUT SWITZERLAND'S 🎩"MAGIC FORMULA"🪄?

DISTRIBUTED POWER

Switzerland’s 🎩“magic formula” 🪄functions like the steady rhythm of a well-tuned clock—its mechanism quiet, precise, and deeply intentional. It governs the composition of the Swiss Federal Council, distributing executive power among the main political parties in a proportion that reflects the electorate, not just the latest electoral winner.

CONTINUITY

Since 1959, this formula has guided the allocation of the seven Council seats, traditionally giving two each to the leading three parties and one to a fourth. Though informal, this arrangement has become a constitutional heartbeat, maintaining a balance that resists political turbulence and prioritizes "continuity over conquest".

BREEDING INSTABILITY

This measured, consensus-driven structure stands in philosophical opposition to the more adversarial, majoritarian democracies like those found in the UK or the US.

In those systems, government is often treated as a pendulum, swinging from one ideology to another as power alternates between parties. While such systems allow for rapid change, they often breed instability, producing cycles of reform and reversal, vision and vengeance.

Political philosopher John Stuart Mill warned of this in his writings on representative government, observing that democracy untethered from balance can become the tyranny of the majority, where long-term national interest is sacrificed to short-term party triumph.

COOPERATION

Switzerland avoids this pitfall by embracing a form of democracy that is both representative and inclusive, one that embeds opposition into the heart of governance itself. The Federal Council makes decisions collectively, and ministers must publicly uphold those decisions regardless of party affiliation.

This forces compromise at the highest level and produces decisions that are the product of multiple perspectives—not one party’s ideology imposed top-down. The system functions less like a battlefield and more like a laboratory: political ideas are tested, adjusted, and refined through cooperation rather than crushed in confrontation.

The result is an environment where policy evolves slowly but deliberately, closer to Edmund Burke’s ideal of society as a contract between past, present, and future.

STABILITY

By keeping all major players at the table, the 🎩magic formula 🪄creates a climate of stability, which is fertile ground for human flourishing. A government that does not swing violently between visions offers its citizens a durable sense of predictability and inclusion. This supports long-term investments in infrastructure, education, public health, and environmental stewardship—foundations of both wealth and wellbeing.

In a metaphorical sense, the Swiss political system functions like a cultivated garden. Rather than razing it and replanting with every election, its caretakers prune, tend, and enrich it season by season, ensuring sustained growth rather than dramatic upheaval.

Moreover, this system strengthens civic trust. Citizens know that their voices—even if not part of the ruling majority—are still represented in decision-making. This inclusion echoes the moral reasoning of philosopher John Rawls, who argued that a just society is one where rules are made behind a “veil of ignorance,” meaning no group can write the laws solely in its own favour.

Switzerland’s governance is structurally aligned with this principle: no single party can dominate, and all must negotiate policies that can be accepted across lines of language, region, and ideology.

CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT

This commitment to inclusion, moderation, and shared responsibility creates not just a stable democracy but one that is self-correcting and capable of gradual but continuous improvement. It is no coincidence that Switzerland ranks among the highest in the world in measures of peace, wealth, health, and education.

It is the political architecture—the quiet clockwork of the magic formula—that sustains these outcomes. In the absence of grand revolutions or pendulum swings, Switzerland has built something rarer: a steady ascent toward a society of peace, security, and prosperity, designed not for spectacle, but for endurance.

#DirectDemocracy 🎩🪄🎩🪄🎩🪄🎩🪄