Interview with Oliver Strijbis: Swiss Lessons on Identity and National Unity

“Political ideas are too abstract. They are not enough to make people emotional about identity. Swiss identity has a cultural element.”

Almost all countries face the question of whether multiple ethnic groups and different identities can co-exist peacefully under the same umbrella of a single government. Switzerland’s four ethnic groups—German, French, Italian, and Romansch—have done so for hundreds of years. Is there a Swiss success formula we should pay attention to?

Dr. Oliver Strijbis, a Swiss-born professor at the University of Zurich in the Institute for Political Science, has been studying this topic for more than a decade.

At a café in Zurich where light filtered through grand windows, Dr. Strijbis and I sat down with cappuccinos in hand. Next to us, hairline cracks in a tawny leather couch exuded a sensible wealth, the kind that sits unnoticed, and intentionally so. Croissants filled red baskets at every table.

In your 2011 paper “The Swiss, a political nation?,” you argued that Switzerland is not just a political union of four different ethnic groups.

Political ideas are too abstract. They are not enough to make people emotional about identity. Swiss identity has a cultural element. [The problem is that cultural divides such as those found within Canada] can threaten the unity of a country. In Switzerland, that does not exist. The French-speaking minority, the Italian-speaking minority, have almost the same levels of identification as the German-speaking majority.