Do you experience a sharp divide in your country’s politics like we are currently witnessing in the US or can parties of opposing ideologies still talk to each other?

11 comments

1. It’s not even close. I’m in the US right now and it’s insane how vocally political people are and how polarized/polarizing it is. There’s some in Denmark and people often say it’s worse now (not sure if I agree on that), but no, it’s not close

2. No, not at all like in the US. It’s the opposite here actually. We have a long tradition of compromise in our political system. Our left-wing parties have been in government with right-wing parties on multiple occasions, something which is usually only done in times of national crisis in most other countries.

3. Switzerland is far more unified than the US, both on a political as well as on a social level. Parties of opposing ideologies not only talk to one another, there’s even something called an “unholy alliance”, which is when the left-wing parties (mainly the Social Democrats and the Green Party) team up with the nationalist, conservative right (SVP) to defeat the center parties on certain issues. This may seem strange but there are in fact quite a few topics where the poles agree, albeit for very different reasons. One prominent example from recent times would be the infamous framework agreement EU-Switzerland. The purpose of this agreement was to keep Switzerland connected to the European Union and its labor market after the old agreement had expired and the EU had introduced various new legislations for itself. Negotiations were extremely difficult and took several years. But once a rough agreement existed, the EU pushed for Switzerland to sign it. In order for the Swiss government to be able to do this, it first had to ask the Swiss population in a referendum for permission. That is when the different political parties began to campaign on the issue and it soon become clear that it was an extremely controversial topic. The yes/no split did not go down the political middle, though. Rather, center parties generally were in strong support of the agreement. Meanwhile, both the left and the right opposed it. The left mainly opposed it because Switzerland has stronger labor protections than the EU and signing the agreement would have meant we would’ve been forced to surrender these protections, thus putting workers in many industries in a worse position. The right opposed it because when you’re an EU member or when you’ve got a framework agreement with the EU, your national courts (supreme court etc.) are no longer the highest judicial institution. Citizens and companies always have the possibility to take all the way to the EU courts in Brussels. This would’ve meant that foreign judges would’ve made decisions pertaining to strictly Swiss cases. There was another big issue of contention, which was that in the case of an agreement, Swiss citizens would’ve been eligible to receive social security benefits in the EU after just a few months of benefits but EU citizens would’ve also been eligible to receive social security benefits in Switzerland after just a few weeks of residence. This was something that both the left and the right opposed for various reasons. In the end, the referendum was defeated because if you add up the core voting groups of SP, Greens and SVP, you get about 57%. So, the agreement wasn’t signed.

   On a social level, one big difference to the US is that our daily life is far less politicized. I believe this is due to multiple facts. For one, Swiss people’s political ideologies are simply less extreme. Of course we too have our share of crazies but that number is far smaller than in America. Maybe this is related to the fact that Swiss people are generally very well educated. There’s also a huge cultural difference, though. Contrary to the US, Switzerland is a highly collectivist society. This means that we are socialized from a very early age to fit in and not stand out of the mass. Most Swiss people find the idea of using political bumper stickers or wearing t-shirts with political messages extremely cringe. The reason for this is likely that the idea of doing such a thing makes them feel super awkward. Most Americans like receiving other people’s attention, being talked to on the street etc. They are far more outgoing and extroverted than Swiss people. Swiss people want to keep to themselves and avoid standing in the spotlight at all costs. This is why you see far less people in Switzerland who want to spread their political (or religious) message in a public setting – *especially* if that message is controversial. They might have strong opinions on a topic but they wouldn’t share those opinions with others except in a private setting. In addition to this, Swiss culture also puts A LOT of value on politeness and “getting along”. I often see/hear Americans say things like: “If my speech offends other people, that’s there problem!” This sentiment would so not fly here. I mean, you could try it but you’d be completely ostracized within a week. No one would want to talk to you. Even people who agreed with you on the subject matter would consider you insufferable. When you’re in a social setting in Switzerland (say, at the office), you will very often hear people make comments that you can tell aren’t wholly genuine because they desperately want to keep the peace. Harmony and getting along is very important for us. So, if a work colleague, store clerk, waiter or acquaintance told me: “Immigrants suck, they cause so much troubles” I wouldn’t tell him to fuck off and that he’s being a racist ass. I and most other Swiss people would say something cryptic like: “Yeah, we live in very complex times, don’t we”, laugh awkwardly and move on to a different topic. This way we didn’t betray our own beliefs but we also didn’t unnecessarily piss off the other person. From what I can tell, Americans are far more unfiltered in their interactions with other people. That is why bumper stickers exist. Americans don’t just want to believe in something, they want everyone around them to know about it, too. It’s also (partially) the reason why the phenomenon of Karens exists.

4. A couple of months ago I was asked by an American what I, as an outsider, thought was the root of American hyperpartisanship. The answer to me was obvious, as something similar happened after the Brexit referendum: it was the two-party system. Any kind of political system in which you only have two options available is going to encourage extreme and unthinking tribalism, and what I saw after the Brexit referendum was a load of people who went from not giving two fucks about the EU to suddenly either regurgitating all the Remainer clichés ad nauseam and sharing every other tweet from Guy Verhofstadt, to being firmly anti-EU and for no deal. The years from 2016-2020 were the closest I ever saw UK partisanship resembling that of the US.

   There are several major differences with the US though:

   – While people still hold strong views on Brexit, most people have moved on from thinking about it 24/7, it feels kind of old hat now.

   – While our system is very much two-party dominated, other smaller parties do still hold some clout. This makes it harder for people’s entire political identities to revolve around one single party and divide themselves neatly into either “progressive” or “conservative”.

   – “There is almost no mutual ground left for the left and the right to talk to each other or reach *any* kind of compromise” – Joe Manchin proves that’s not true, there’s plenty of room for compromise, the two parties just choose *not* to.

   – Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever denied the results of a general election and refused to concede. There were calls from Remainers to have a second referendum as “people didn’t know what they were voting for” and for the results to be ignored as the referendum wasn’t legally binding, but nobody seriously claimed that the results themselves were illegitimate.

   – Our political divides aren’t tied to historical ethnic divides in the same way as they are in the US. The exception to that, of course, is in Northern Ireland, where politics is at least as, if not more, partisan than in the US.

5. Today, I don’t think so at American levels, but Italian politics is still quite polarised, and therefore dialogue between the most diverse parties is quite difficult (Draghi had managed to do a few things, but always with a view to a government of national unity to manage the COVID emergency). The years of the historic compromise between Communists and Christian Democrats in the 1970s seem very far away.

6. Brexit isn’t that much of a divide – the second major party in the UK, Labour, have stated they respect the result and will [not seek to immediately rejoin the EU](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/labour-leader-keir-starmer-rules-out-uk-rejoining-european-union-b982474.html) if elected.

7. We have a wide spectrum with lots of different parties, currently we have 16 different parties in our government. So the ultra left and ultra right and everything in-between. And because of the high amount of parties they have to compromise.

8. You are right about Poland – while I dont consider myself very progressive I truly hate right wing politcians (to a point I want to see them prosecuted for not obeying our constitution, or removed by force if there is an opportunity for that), people who vote for them and people who dont give a fuck and dont vote at all.

9. Kind of. A prime example would be the [“Bain Principle”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Bain#Parliamentary_career), where the Labour Party in Scotland will make a point of not supporting anything put forward by the SNP, even if it’s a traditionally Labour position. That being said there have been some cases of cross-party support, such as the [Period Products Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Period_Products_(Free_Provision)_(Scotland)_Act_2021), which was proposed by a Labour MSP and had support from all parties in the Scottish Parliament.

   At UK level there isn’t really all that much of a difference between their three main parties anyway, but that’s another issue.

10. In Cyprus, it’s more likely that you’ll see the MPs from the Democratic Right party, the Communist party and the Nationalist (read: Fascist) party sitting down in the parliament canteen having coffee together.

    When it comes to common goals, a lot of them do unite together.

11. The government here is almost always a coalition of two parties that have to agree and negotiate on things they don’t agree on. Currently it’s a three party coalition.

    The country would be in deep trouble if parties were unable to talk to each other.

    However there are certainly some parties from opposing ends that have almost no ground for any common conversation. At least on the federal level.