Political and financial autonomy of the second and third tier of the state

Each of the 26 cantons and each of the more than 2’170 communes that make up the second and third level of the state enjoys complete political and financial autonomy within the framework of their own powers and responsibilities. The third chapter illustrates and explains how it has been possible to apply the principle of subsidiarity so successfully across dozens, hundreds, and thousands of self-contained political units despite their very different profiles.

Thanks to this third ingredient, the country obtains/has access:

• to an excellent distribution of wealth, and to a great socio-economic cohesion across the whole country and social classes. No region and/or social stratum is “left behind”, nor do they become a “brake” for those “further ahead”.
• to be able to fragment, reduce, simplify, distribute and “adjust” the “weight” of political agendas to the capacities of each and every government and parliament at the three levels of the state. A by-product of this institutional arrangement is that political power is distributed among more than 36’000 people working as militia and part-time.
• to avoid the existence of professional politicians, the formation of dominant and abusive partitocracies, and to secure not falling into the “black hole” of pluralist democracies.
• to develop a great capacity (and culture) for self-management throughout the country, even in the most remote and underprivileged mountain villages.
• to enormous effectiveness and transparency both in defining the “optimal” size of the state, and in the management and functioning of it.