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The Impact of Social Movements on Political Institutions: a Comparison of the Introduction of Direct Legislation In Switzerland and the U.S.
Hanspeter Kriesi and Dominique Wisler
Institute for European Studies
Working Paper no. 96.6
November, 1996
1. Introduction
Political institutions have been considered as the most stable elements of opportunity structures, almost beyond the reach of social movements. This is not surprising. The framers of political institutions purposely design them to last and make it difficult for challengers to change them in the first place. The stability and duration of institutions is a value in itself, since they allow for long-term planning. Moreover, institutions also have built in mechanisms that make them self-perpetuating. They tend to generate patterns of beliefs and preferences that sustain them, because wants and desires are conditioned by the perception of available opportunities: by the mechanism of "adaptive preferences" one often dismisses as undesirable what is unattainable anyhow (Elster 1983; 1988: 311). Political institutions tend to channel preference formation into specific directions and to narrow the vision so that alternatives are not perceived as feasible. As is observed by Sunstein (1988: 351), the phenomenon of adaptive preferences joins with collective action problems to make significant change extremely difficult to achieve with respect to political institutions.
This is, of course, not to forget that political institutions have been a major area of contest in democracies not so long ago and our contribution will analyze one moment of the struggle for the institutionalization of democracy, i.e. the struggle for direct legislation which constituted the main issue of the democratic movement in Switzerland during the 1860s and of its counterpart in the West of the United States between the 1880s and 1910s. The case of direct democracy allows us to reflect more generally on the problem of how social movements achieve institutional change. We shall argue that institutional change implies a paradigmatic shift regarding the political system. Such a shift occurs only in periods of profound societal crisis, which open up the opportunity for fundamental social learning and the introduction of a new set of institutions, i.e. a new political paradigm. This learning is, however, bound to the experiences people have made in the past, which is why, in order to impose itself, the new paradigm must "resonate" well with the political heritage of the past. Finally, we shall identify three additional conditions which facilitate institutional innovation and which have been crucial for the success of the democratic movements we are studying in this paper -- federalism, the lack of institutionalization of the state, and the division of the political elite.
2. The paradigmatic shift and its French model
Institutional change constitutes a paradigmatic shift in the make up of a polity. By analogy to Kuhn's (1962) argument about paradigmatic shifts in the history of science, such a shift is triggered by "anomalies" which cannot be taken care of within the framework of the old paradigm, i.e. of the established institutions. The paradigmatic shift institutionalizes a new set of rules which define a new framework for and establish a new era of "normal politics". In the case of direct democracy, the shift was from the paradigm of "representative government" to the new paradigm of "direct legislation by the people". The origins of this new paradigm go back to the ideas of Rousseau and Condorcet and their historical actualization in two successive constitutional projects of the French Revolution (Kölz 1992): the constitutions of the Girondist (February 1793) and of the Montagnard (June 1793). The Montagnard constitution had introduced a device for the legislative referendum where, for the first time, individuals rather than localities became the basis for the count of the vote. It is this mode of counting, which truly echoed a new conception of citizenship and which constitutes the specificity of the modern paradigm of direct legislation (Kölz 1992; Curti 1885: 83). In the rapid course of revolutionary events, these constitutions were never implemented and the Terror put an abrupt end to the new paradigm. Even if its flame was still kept alive by some French socialists, like Considérant and the review "la démocratie pacifique", direct legislation became increasingly marginal in the French constitutional tradition and, according to Frei (1995), both constitutions came to be viewed as revolutionary utopias rather than practical solutions for the government of France. However, the modern direct democratic paradigm has been given a new lease on life by two powerful social movements in Switzerland and the United States in the 19th century. These movements eventually succeeded in imposing this new paradigm in their respective polities. The 1860s constitute the crucial decade for the Swiss case, when the key canton of Zurich adopted what has later been described as the most democratic constitution in Switzerland by introducing in a coherent way all direct legislation devices known at that time. Following the example set by the Swiss cantons and the Swiss federal government, the US States west of the Mississippi adopted some of these instruments at the turn of the 20th century (see table I in annexe).
Historiography describes the "democratic movement" in Switzerland as a social movement that used collective action to claim above all the right of direct legislation, especially the legislative initiative and the optional referendum in the 1860s. Other claims of the movement included the direct election of the executive and of government officials (such as judges and teachers), a tax reform, and the creation of a state bank. Although claims for more direct democracy have already been made in Switzerland since the 1830s, these earlier movements were less successful and less extensive. Nevertheless, the so-called "veto" was first introduced in St. Gallen and Basel-country as early as 1831/32. Several cantons followed these examples in the early forties, but, according to Curti (1885), the wave was quickly stopped after the cantons dominated by the liberals realized that the use of the veto could contribute to the fall of a liberal government, as it did in the case of Lucerne in 1841. A motion demanding the veto thus was turned down in Zurich in 1842. It is only in the sixties that the democratic movement, a broad coalition of farmers, artisans and workers, got more momentum. After its initial success in the Canton of Zurich in 1867/69, the paradigm of direct legislation spread decisively to the other cantons and, in 1874, was also introduced at the federal level.
In the United States, the movement for direct legislation started two decades later, in the 1880s, under the impulse of a coalition of the populist movement, a coalition of farmers and workers. As in Switzerland, the referendum had already been known at the constitutional level-the constitution of Massachusetts was the first modern constitution to have been adopted by referendum in 1778. Moreover, several states used the plebiscite, i.e. a referendum at the discretion of the authorities, for legislation from time to time. However, it was South Dakota, which, under the impulse of the populist movement, was first to introduce the initiative and the referendum according to the new paradigm in 1898. Its example was followed mostly by states situated west of the Mississippi. Two waves of direct democratic constitutional amendments can be distinguished in the US. The first impulse by the populist movement (1890s to 1910s) was followed by that of the progressive movement at the turn of the twentieth century, a middle-class movement that made an attempt to replace corrupt practices and the patronage of political parties by "good government" reforms. In the struggle for direct democracy, prohibitionists and suffragettes were usually allies during the first wave, and the movement was successful almost exclusively in states situated West of the Mississippi River (see, for example, Price 1975). The second wave, which occurred during the seventies, is linked to the rise of the new social movements. Although only Florida, Wyoming and Illinois adopted some form of initiative during this second wave, direct democracy was taken into consideration by many other states (Cronin 1989: 51).
3. The crisis
Goldstone's (1980) reanalysis of Gamson's (1975) classical study found that social movement success is more likely in periods of crisis. What applies to movements in general should be particularly true for movements making claims for institutional change. According to Siegenthaler (1993: 178), the core of a crisis is constituted by the loss of faith in the established set of rules. This loss of faith in the basic institutions of society does not bring about the crisis, but it is the characteristic feature of a crisis. It becomes probable as a consequence of increasing uncertainty which is, in turn, a result of the distributional effects of stable economic development. In Siegenthaler's theoretical model, periods of structural stability are giving way to transitional, problem-or intermediary phases, i.e. to crises in our terminology, when the structure, which is essentially a system of cognitive rules, becomes more malleable, processes of fundamental learning take place, social organizations undergo change, are newly created and relate to each other in unprecedented ways. In such periods, the institutional rules of the game of the political system are subject to sharp conflicts and risk to be changed. We cannot do justice here to this highly complex theoretical construct, but we believe that it provides an elaborate argument in support of the idea that institutional change is most likely to take place during periods of crises.
Historical studies have well documented that both the Swiss democratic movement in the 1860s and the American populist movement in the 1890s arose in a period of deep economic crisis. Both movements grew out of an economic crisis which put an end to a period of considerable growth. The situation is described by Schaffner (1982) for Zurich and by Blum (1977) and Epple (1979) for Basel-country, both crucial contexts for the development of the democratic movement. Schaffner draws attention to the profound social change which had taken place during the period of economic growth which the Canton of Zurich had undergone during the 1850s and early 1860s. The expansion of the cotton and silk industry created new wealth, but also an increasing industrial proletariat. In addition, the period of growth created new disparities between regions, especially between the city and the countryside, for example in the context of the railroad question. Moreover, the transformations of the capital market profoundly changed the relationship between debtors and creditors. In the process, the farmers lost their traditionally privileged position on the demand-side of the capital market and were hard pressed to adapt to its changing rules which were no longer rooted in the rural world. In many ways, this period of growth had undermined old certainties and had created the tensions, which became only fully apparent at the moment of crisis.
This crisis in Zurich hit all sectors of society. As far as the farmers are concerned, they witnessed a series of bad harvests in the 1860s, which assumed catastrophic proportions in 1866/67. Rising interests rates at already high mortgaging levels and decreasing prices for grain put the farmers under enormous pressure. The two main industries of the Canton-the silk and cotton industries also entered into a deep crisis starting in 1864, from which they recovered only in the early 1870s. The income levels of the workers declined and consumer prices went up at the same time. Finally, artisans suffered as well from the general lack of demand. Schaffner (1982: 133) concludes: "the crisis concerned factory workers, day labourers, servants, farmers and artisans all simultaneously". He argues (p. 176) that the "experience of the simultaneous setbacks in the primary and the secondary sector sharpened the consciousness of the farmers, workers and artisans who were hit by them for the profound transformations of their way of life which had been going on for the last decennies". In addition, the cholera epidemic of 1867, which coincided with the economic crisis in Zurich not only aggravated the living conditions of the urban working class, but drew the attention of a broader public to its squalid living conditions and revealed in a most dramatic way the extent of the social inequality.
As far as the American situation is concerned, Cronin (1989: 43) states that the "boom-and-bust" cycles affecting frontier farmers and miners helped foment resentment toward elites in times of economic distress, sparking cries for economic and political reform. Such was the case with Daniel Shay's rebellion, some Antifederalists and, later, Jeffersonian Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats. The Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, single-taxers of the Henry George school, and the People's (populist) party were all populist-minded groups that became prominent in the period between 1875 and 1895, when prices for farm commodities dropped so low that in certain sections of the country farming was carried on at an actual loss: "These farmers and others suffering from economic hard times looked back to an earlier age when they believed they had been less exploited -a time when there were few millionaires and no beggars, few monopolies and no recessions. In short, the populist spirit was born of both nostalgia and genuine hope for a restoration of conditions prevailing before industrialism, large-scale corporate capitalism, and the commercialization of agriculture. ....In the late eighties and early nineties the number of farm foreclosures skyrocketed. In some counties in Kansas, for example, 90 percent of the farms passed into the ownership of loan companies. The combination of denied credit, deeper debt, harsh taxation, and rising rail rates led the discontent to suspect a conspiracy by the moneyed interests of the country to enslave them in a web of economic servitude." (see also Argersinger 1974:23-57).
Dibbern (1980), analyzing the social profile of the populist-minded farmers in one border county of South Dakota, found that, far from being nativist or poor, they were usually immigrants that had arrived in the county during the great expansion of population and agriculture on the frontier in the 1880s. They became small property owners and invested heavily during the "boom" and the excellent climatic conditions of that period. Indebted as they were, these farmers fell victim to the "bust" caused by a simultaneous decline in prices, population and rainfall during the 1890s. "Without a successful harvest", Dibbern (1980:214) writes, "it was almost impossible for these farmers to meet their interest payments and to preserve their farms. Populism was rooted in this vulnerability".
The crisis precondition is certainly crucial for those movements which Tarrow (1994) calls "early risers". For late-comers, as McAdam (1995) points out, the crisis may be less relevant, because other mechanisms come now into play which facilitate the diffusion of a new political paradigm from one context to the other (see below).
4. Framing
Under conditions of liberal democracies, institutional change presupposes a process of social learning on the part of large sections of the population, except in the limiting case of a social revolution, where the new institutions are imposed by force. This implies that ideas come to play a crucial role in the process (Hall 1993). As Siegenthaler (1993) has argued, a crisis situation increases the likelihood of fundamental learning of the required type. But, if it is likely that the crisis gives rise to a loss of faith in the established rules and to the widespread readiness for fundamental learning, it is by no means certain that the origins of the crisis are attributed to the basic rules of the political game rather than to some elements of specific legislation or to the rules governing the economy or some other subsystem of society. Using Snow and Benford's (1988) distinctions between "diagnostic" and "prognostic" frames, the old political paradigm is only put into question when people diagnose the problems they face as anomalies or deficiencies produced by the established political institutions, and when they believe that the adoption of a new institutional paradigm will dramatically improve their situation. Elster (1988) has argued that consequential arguments for constitutional change-the "prognostic" frames-are likely to be speculative, because it is hard to know the actual consequences of major institutional changes in advance. This is why, he argues that a new political paradigm is typically justified by arguments from justice (p. 319f.): "If a reform is perceived as fundamentally just, people will be motivated to endure the costs of transition and the extensive trial and error procedures that may be required before a viable implementation is found." Let us add with Elster that, like all norms, "those of justice and fairness are extremely context-dependent in the way they are interpreted and applied. They are, in particular, highly sensitive to framing and reframing" (p. 316).
For the US populist/progressive movement and the Swiss democratic movement the diagnosis for the origins of the crisis was very similar. Both of them attributed the crisis to the deficiencies of the system of representative democracy. Both sought to overcome these deficiencies by the introduction of direct democratic procedures, while other contemporary movements did not share these frames. To illustrate the framing in Switzerland, we shall restrict ourselves to the democratic movement in the Canton of Zurich which has been comparatively better studied than other cases. For the American case, we use more generally secondary literature on the populist and the progressive movement, in particular Cronin (1989).
The democratic movement in Zurich arose in a specific context. It mobilized against the liberals which had been governing the canton uninterruptedly for 15 years. More specifically, they mobilized against the "system Escher", which took its name from the dominant liberal personality of the epoch, Alfred Escher, who not only was the head of one of the major banks and a crucial figure of the expanding railroad industry, but also the dominant member of the Zurich government and a key figure in the federal parliament. Describing the "System Escher", a 1867 pamphlet of the Zurich democratic movement diagnosed the situation this way: "What kind of system is it that we are talking about? The system which brought to this canton the coalition of moneyed interests, credit powers and railroads, the clique and government behind the scene" (cited in Curti 1885: 219). Karl Bürkli, one of the leaders of the movement defined it in these terms at one of the general assemblies organized by the movement: "As system I understand the pernicious influence of the business interests, above all of the north-east railroad (dominated by Escher, H.K. and D.W.) where they have their headquarters, the credit bank (also dominated by Escher)..... The system, just as the cholera cannot be touched with your hands, but you can feel it in your limbs. If in 1830, the Uster day had to bring down an old, decaying, but legal city aristocracy, we have to topple now a new, luxuriantly growing, but illegal money aristocracy....." (cited in Gross 1983: 35). The speaker makes reference here not only to the cholera epidemic which was ravaging the Zurich population at the time, but also to the glorious days almost two generations ago, when the liberal revolution had brought down the aristocratic regime which had been reestablished in Zurich after the defeat of Napoleon. Instead of "money aristocracy" democrats also used the term "representative aristocracy", suggesting that the old aristocracy had in fact been substituted by a new aristocracy of big business interests which had captured the institutions of representative democracy. In a series of pamphlets, one of which sold more than 30,000 copies (in a polity with no more than 60,000 active citizens), the main agitator of the movement claimed that the republic had fallen prey to a clique of unscrupulous and greedy men who subordinated morality and justice to their own material interests (Schaffner 1982: 166ff.).
The diagnoses made by the populist and the progressive movements in the US were very similar to the ones of their Swiss counterparts. Ray Billington (quoted in Cronin 1989:44) characterized the populist perception of the situation in the late 1870s as follows: "On the one side are the allied hosts of monopolies, the money power, great trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the enactment of the laws to benefit them and impoverish the people. On the other are the farmers, laborers merchants, and all other people who produce wealth and bear the burdens of taxation". Big business was framed as corrupting civil servants and legislators and it was "a pathetic and tragic thing", as stated by the Wisconsin progressive Robert La Follette (Cronin 1989:56), "to see honest men falling before these insidious forces", succumbing to threats to their material situation, or to the attraction of appointments to Washington jobs, bribes of money and women, and even resorting to getting legislators drunk before a critical vote. Direct democratic devices were thought to "diminish the impact of corrupt influences on the legislature, undermine bossism, and induce legislators to be more attentive to public opinion and the broader public interest" (Cronin 1989: 53). In its address to the citizens of San Francisco, who would eventually vote for the new city charter that introduced, in 1899, the initiative and the referendum at the city level, the Citizens' Charter Association declared: "We appeal to all good citizens to endorse the work of their freeholders elected last December and thus crystallize into low and honest effort to save San Francisco from the rule of the bosses, the water, lighting and railroad corporations and allied interests which have daily dealings
with the city government and which have in the past and will in the future, unless they are restrained, debauch our politics, rob the people and paralyze the orderly operation of the law..." (quoted in Oberholzer 1912:352).
Direct legislation constituted the main plank of the movement's prognostic framing. Karl Bürkli wrote: "Where do we find the panacea against this (system, H.K. and D.W.)? We find it in direct legislation by the people, since the representative system was too permeable to the corrupt influences" (cited in Gross 1983: 33). Salomon Bleuler, another main exponent of the movement used a pathological metaphor to frame the solution in his address to a general assembly in December 1867: "The extension of the people's rights hits the core and vital nerve of one of our main evils, it cuts through and destroys the one-sided economical interests, the superiority of one individual and his devout followers" (quoted in Gross 1983:28). The movement asked for the total revision of the Constitution of the canton by a constituent assembly to be elected without delay by the citizens of the canton.
The paradigm of direct democracy was not invented by the democratic movement. As is observed by Ostrom (1990:209), the particular set of rules that reformers contemplate "rarely contains all possible rules that might be used to govern an operational situation. The rules proposed are likely to be in a repertoire of rules already familiar to those who propose them". In this sense, the structure of the existing political institutions provides not only the incentive to look for alternatives, but also constrains the possible search for alternatives. A similar idea is developed by Luthard (1994). In this sense, the new paradigm of direct legislation was inspired by older forms of direct democracy in Switzerland and in the US and represented a modernization of these forms of governement rather than a completely new invention. It had a high "narrative fidelity", because it resonated well with "the stories, myths, and folk tales that are part and parcel of one's cultural heritage and thus function to inform events and experiences in the immediate present" (Snow and Benford 1988: 210). As Kölz (1992) has documented, the liberal Swiss reformers of the 1830s and 1840s, who had already experimented with direct-democratic devices and had introduced rudimentary elements of direct legislation such as the popular "veto" in some member states of the Swiss confederation, took their models from the constitutions of the French revolution, without, however, explicitly acknowledging their sources. The French revolutionaries, in turn, did not create ex nihilo the paradigm of direct democracy either. As we have already seen, it was the state of Massachusetts that was first to adopt a democratic constitution in 1787 by referendum. Moreover, many authors (see, for example, Auer 1989) attribute the resonance of direct democratic procedures in the US member states to earlier forms of "town meetings" in New England and to the Calvinist ideology of "common consent". Thus, leaders of the populist movement framed the new paradigm not as a new form of governement, but much more as a "restoration" of an older kind of self governement in the US.
In Switzerland, the democratic movement radicalized the liberal ideas and tied its claims for direct democracy to the older heritage of the popular myths about the direct democratic general assemblies ("Landsgemeinden") in Alpine cantons and the General Councils in city cantons such as Geneva, Lucerne, Fribourg and St. Gallen (Battelli 1932). The Liberals and Radicals had rejected this older Swiss tradition of general assemblies. As Kölz (1992: 628) points out, they were afraid of political fragmentation, since in larger cantons only decentralized assemblies would have been possible. Moreover, they were skeptical about the readiness of the people to accept their progressive ideas, and, finally, they wanted a strictly individualistic, liberal and secularized democracy, not a cooperative or communal one. By contrast, the democratic movement explicitly built on the indigenous republican tradition. If Bürkli, "the most conscious protagonist" of the new paradigm (Curti 1885: 216), was also heavily influenced by the French constitutional models and the ideas of such French socialists of the 1840s as Considérant, he and his colleagues also revived the memory of the traditional assembly democracies which had survived the aristocratic regimes of the 17th and 18th centuries, and which provided an important emotional and ideological support for the democratic movement (Kölz 1992: 629). The ideologues of the democratic movement tried to frame the new paradigm as nothing else but a modernization of tradition. Thus, Karl Bürkli wrote that "the old democracy, which had been taken away from the people by monarchist ignorance and blind faith in priests ("Pfaffenglauben") should be won back by reason and science and modernized according to the changing times" (Gross 1983: 39). It is no accident that the movement used the commemoration of the Uster day on the 22nd of November 1867 to launch its campaign for a new constitution. And it is no accident either that it organized a series of public assemblies which culminated in four large general assemblies, called "Landsgemeinden" by its protagonists, in December 1867.
In Switzerland as in the US, direct democracy was perceived as a means to solve the problems created by the deficiencies of representative democracy. In both countries, the movements claiming direct democracy made similar additional demands, such as the creation of a state or cantonal bank to alleviate the credit squeeze of the farmers. In both countries, the respective movements created similar images of their adversaries: they mobilized against the world of the "boss", the "money" and "corruption". According to the imagery of both of these movements, the representative political system did not work because it was in the hands of an oligarchy, a money elite-as symbolized in Zurich by the "System Escher"-or responsive to powerful interest groups-as the Southern Pacific railroad company in California. Direct democracy was seen as the only means to put an end to the failure of the representative political system to address the needs of the people. The aim of direct democracy was to put an end to the influence of the "boss" on the political system (see also Möckli 1994: 176f.).
Socialists in Switzerland and the US were optimistic about the possibilities to introduce social reforms by direct legislation and they saw the referendum and initiative as "bridges to the new world". Socialists in other countries, however, were less sanguine about the promises of direct democracy and less inclined to attribute the predicament of the working class to the malfunctioning of the representative system. Thus, Karl Bürkli, was rather isolated when he advocated direct legislation on the 4th Congress of the International Workers Association (IAA), held at Basel in September 1869 (Gross 1983: 40f.). Direct democracy was not officially debated at this congress and was only discussed in the Friday evening session at the very end of the congress week. The proposal was sharply attacked by the Belgian delegates who maintained that the concept was not adapted to the Belgian and the French political contexts and that socialists should not contribute to the legitimacy of the respective governments by participating in their politics. Although direct democracy became part of the social democrats' program in Germany in the 1860s already, Karl Bürkli considered it to be nothing but "decoration" (quoted in Hernekamp 1979: 234). Direct legislation was in fact opposed by the fathers of the movement: Marx called it the "old world-wide known democratic Litany", Engels saw in it nothing but "pure fashion", and Kautsky warned for the reactionary and conservative results of these devices (Heussner 1993: 58). By contrast, the socialist movement in the United States was instrumental in bringing about institutional change at the state levels and direct democracy was adopted in the national platforms of the Socialist Labor party as early as 1885 (Heussner 1993: 44) and by the American Federation of Labor in 1902 (Cronin 1989: 164-65).
5. Structural conditions
How was it possible that these movements could successfully impose the new paradigm? We believe that it was not enough that its claims resonated well with the political culture of the US and Swiss contexts. In addition, they met with similar political opportunity structures which facilitated their success considerably, but which were absent in other countries where the direct democratic paradigm did not get implemented. We shall deal with two aspects of this political opportunity structure-federalism and the degree of institutionalization of the state.
a) Federalism
First of all, the federalist structure of Switzerland and the United States provided crucial opportunities for both of these movements. Quite generally, we argue that a federalist state structuon in th Northwestern Universit Pö /mnU conditions which facilitate the success of a movement for institutional change are met in any one of the parallel subsystems of a federalist state than in the unique system of a unitary state. A social movement favoring institutional change may monitor the behaviour of the authorities in different places and test the strength of their resistance to the new paradigm periodically. The multiplication of parallel access points to the political system increases the likelihood that the system will yield at one point or the other. This likelihood is increased by the possibility that the pressures exerted by social and economic conditions may be particularly strong in the context of a given subsystem. We have, for example, seen that in Zurich the economic crisis of the 1860s was accompanied by a Cholera epidemic which contributed to the grievances of the population and sharpened its perception for the desolate state of the local working class. This coincidence was unique to Zurich, and it would have mattered less had Zurich not had its own political system which could be made directly responsible for this situation.
Moreover, it is the smaller scale of each one of the member states of a federalist state which facilitates the mobilization and the eventual success of a social movement. This has, of course, been especially true in the 19th century when transportation and communication were not yet as easy as today. As Schaffner (1982: 43) reports, the contentious gatherings of the democratic movement in the Canton of Zurich assembled no less than 15,000 people, about a fourth of the citizens having the right to vote. The petition which its leaders presented to the Zurich government at the end of the year 1867 was signed by no less than 27,000 citizens. This enormous level of mobilization would not have been possible in a larger polity with larger distances and longer communication lines to surmount. In the absence of mass communications, telephones and Internet, the people had to meet physically in order to give expression to their opposition to the government, to get informed about the new program and to debate the proposals made by the leaders of the movement.
If initial success in a member state of a federalist state is more likely than in a unitary state, the federalist structure also provides an opportunity for the diffusion of this initial success. With Ostrom (1990:190ff.) we would like to stress the incremental, self-transforming nature of institutional change: "Success in starting small-scale initial institutions enables a group of individuals to build on the social capital thus created to solve larger problems with larger and more complex institutional arrangements." In other words, institutions which build on past experience and which have been proven to work in similar contexts are more likely to be adopted than institutions which have not been used before. The federalist structure of the state allows this kind of small-scale experiments (see also Aubert 1983) and the success of a movement in one context increases the likelihood that it will succeed in other, similar contexts within the federalist structure as well. In other words, the successful implementation of the new set of institutions in one context increases the "empirical credibility" of the new paradigm in other, similar contexts. As it has been defined by Snow and Benford (1988: 208) "empirical credibility" refers to the "fit between the framing and events in the world". With Snow and Benford (1988: 208) we may grant that what is constitutive of empirical evidence for any particular claim is itself subject to debate. However, this does not imply that events are completely insignificant for the interpretative success of one paradigm over the other, as Gamson (1992: 69f.) seems to suggest. If citizens in a neighboring, very similar political system turn out to be able to participate in direct-democratic procedures, and if the political system is not destabilized by this innovation but becomes rather more stable by its introduction, it will be increasingly difficult for adherents of the old paradigm to argue to the contrary. The success of an "initiator" movement in one context has two additional effects on similar kinds of movements in other contexts of the federal state: they are put under pressure to achieve the same goal, and, at the same time, they learn from the successful movements how to go about doing this. As in Goertz's (1994) barrier model of diffusion, we may expect that once the barrier of resistance against the new institutions has broken down in one context, its breakdown becomes much more likely in other, similar contexts and the new institutions are likely to spread rapidly to all of them.
The spread of the new direct democratic paradigm in Switzerland confirms these expectations. Zurich was not the first canton to introduce the new instruments, but Zurich was unique for the scope of direct-democratic procedures it introduced. The success of the democratic movement in the Canton of Zurich proved to be decisive for the further spread of the new paradigm to other cantons. Right after the adoption of the new constitution in the Canton of Zurich in 1869, Thurgovie, Soleure, Berne and Lucern followed its example and Argovie adopted a similar set of direct-democratic institutions the following year (see the appendix, and Gmürr 1948). Other cantons followed in the 1880s and 1890s. As we have already pointed out in the introduction, in 1874, the optional referendum was introduced at the federal level, too.
For the US case, a number of authors have pointed out the importance of the local autonomy, newly acquired by cities, for the spread of direct democratic procedures (Moeckli 1994: 175). Auer (1989: 111-12) found that the decentralization and the adoption of the "home-rule"principle by states in the late 19th century has been crucial for the development of direct democracy: "In the West everything seems to have begun in local communities and, more specifically, in big cities when they acquired, or better, conquered a certain level of organizational autonomy which freed them from the grip of the state." Indeed, the first forms of initiatives are to be found at the local level in the United States. Oberholzer (1912: 387-88) mentions many examples. Thus, Iowa introduced direct democratic instruments first at the county level in 1897. Cities in Nebraska adopted the initiative and the referendum in 1898, i.e. 14 years before analogous legislation was passed at the state level. Similarly, in California, direct legislation had been introduced at the county level (1893) and in 14 home-rule cities between 1898 and 1910, before such legislation was adopted at the state level in 1911 (Key and Crouch 1939:428).
Let us, finally, note that the Swiss example was instrumental for the spread of direct democracy in the American West. Rappard (1912: 129-132) counted more than a hundred writings and articles published in the US on the Swiss case between 1883 and 1898. One book was particularly influential in diffusing the new paradigm in the US, namely Sullivan's Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum, published in 1893. Sullivan was a socialist leader and journalist who had studied direct democracy in Switzerland at the occasion of two prolonged stays and returned to write a series of articles about the initiative and referendum in 1889 and the early 1890s. According to Cronin (1989), "Sullivan was convinced that direct legislation was not an impractical, utopian scheme-it worked there, and he believed it would work well in the United States". In other words, the Swiss experiment enhanced the empirical credibility of the devices and "proved" that direct democracy was feasible even outside of Switzerland. The positive results of direct democracy were clearly overstated by Sullivan, but the Swiss example contributed to the attractiveness of the new paradigm in the US.
b) Lack of institutionalization of the state
Another striking similarity between the US and the Swiss states at the time of the democratic movements concerns their lack of institutionalization in Badie and Birnbaum's (1982) sense of the term. This implies, first of all, that both states were (and still are) very permeable to the influence of outside (mainly economic) interests. This was true for the Eastern states (see McCaffery 1993:153-59), too, but was particularly flagrant in the West, where the monopolitistic railways companies exercised a tremendous power on legislatures and governors (Key and Crouch 1939, Shefter 1994). Moreover, the US "spoils system" or "patronage state", which was attacked by the populist and the progressive movements, made the administration dependent on the political parties ("machines"). The progressive movement in California was as much an "anti-machine" movement as a movement for good government. This kind of state was very vulnerable to charges of "corruption" and to the claim that the parliament should be made more accountable to the people through direct democratic devices. In Switzerland, it was the same lack of state autonomy which made the "Escher System" possible and which increased the government's vulnerability with respect to the framing of the democratic movement. More institutionalized states, such as France, or Germany since 1871 had a more independent, coherent and professional bureaucracy which was both more insulated from monopolistic interests and the patronage of political parties. These strong states were much less vulnerable to corruption frames (see Curtius 1919: 23).
But a weak state is not only more vulnerable to charges of corruption and to claims for direct popular legislation, it is also less capable or ready to resort to repression in order to defend itself against challenging movements. Thus, a Swiss police intelligence was not developed before the turn of the century and, as a matter of fact, was a concession, made reluctantly, to pressures exercised by Bismarck to control foreign revolutionaries on the Swiss territory (Liang 1992: 10). It was not, at first, oriented toward local social movements. The situation was certainly very similar in the new Western states of the US. By contrast, France and Prussia had developed early professional police forces and they were better able to control ideas as well as movements (see Liang 1992). Basically, in the 1860s, the only repressive force at the disposition of cantonal authorities in Switzerland was the local militia-not a very dependable force in the face of a massive popular rebellion. Up to the 1840s, armed revolts against the capital, violent demonstrations and bloody fights had belonged to the action repertoire of intra cantonal politics in Zurich and many other regions in Switzerland. Thus, back in 1839 the government, solidly liberal at the time, too, had been toppled by an armed rebellion of the countryside, against which it had been quite defenseless. By the 1860s, this type of political violence had disappeared from the politics of most cantons, although it still existed in Geneva. However, memories of these events were still fresh and the cantonal governments may not have been sure about the readiness of the democratic movement to resort to such tactics.
With the lack of coercive means and the fear to lose control over elections, the dominant strategy of the cantonal governments with respect to political opponents was integrative. They tried to make limited concessions and to coopt the leaders of the social movements. This is illustrated by the case of Johann Jakob Treichler, a leading socialist opponent of the 1840s and 1850s in Zurich. Treichler was coopted into the government of the "Escher system" and was, in fact, its president at the time when his former friend Karl Bürkli headed the democratic movement in the late sixties. This is also illustrated by the reaction of the Zurich government to the first campaign of the democratic movement in 1863. Faced with considerable popular unrest, the government had declared its readiness to revise the cantonal constitution, but once the revolt had subsided, it took its time with the revision and finally introduced some limited changes which did not make any direct democratic concessions and left the representative system essentially intact. This revision was adopted by a popular vote in fall 1865. But the integrative dominant strategy is also illustrated by the governing liberals reaction to the new, much more important campaign of the democratic movement in late 1867. Without delay, the liberal majority of the cantonal parliament accepted the movement's petition asking for the total revision of the cantonal constitution and fixed the date for a referendum about this question on January 26, 1868! Even if we grant that the governing elite seems to have miscalculated its chances in the popular vote (Craig 1988: 271), this was an extraordinary concession. As it turned out, the overwhelming majority of the citizens accepted the principle of the total revision and the call for a constituent assembly. The governing liberals still counted on winning the election of this assembly in spring 1868, but they only got about a third of the seats, while the democrats won enough seats to capture the presidency of the assembly and a majority in the committee that was to draw up the actual text. The final document which implemented all of the demands of the democratic movement was ratified in a popular vote in April 1869.
The fact that almost only the US states situated west of the Mississippi (Cronin 1989:47) adopted direct democratic devices in their constitution is remarkable and may be partially explained in terms of their lack of institutionalization. These states were much more recent than the Eastern states and their representative system seems to have been penetrated to a greater extent by business interests. In fact, as in California, the Southern Pacific Railroad company exercised a tremendous leverage on politics. According to Shefter (1994: 179), "the most powerful force in state politics during this period [the last decades of the nineteenth century] was not a party organization, but rather the Southern Pacific Railroad. The most influential political figure in California was not a party boss, but rather the head of the railroad's Political Bureau". These states probably also lacked a strong civil service due to the youth of their institutions. Cronin (1989: 165) attributes the adoption of direct legislation in these states to their "young age" and asserts that the Eastern states could prove that the representative system had worked. In other words, according to Cronin, the representative systems of the Western states could not count on an established state tradition and were in that sense much more vulnerable to the new paradigm.
In conclusion, the movements for direct democracy in the second part of the 19th century were more successful in poorly institutionalized states which were more vulnerable to the new paradigm of direct legislation than states that had already acquired a stronger autonomy vis à vis the business interests as a result of both the professionalization of politicians, the establishment of a strong and independent bureaucracy and the establishment of mass-based and strong political parties. The lack of institutionalization of the Swiss and the US member states made the diagnostic frames of the democratic and populist/progressive movements more credible and where political parties had not developed mass-based political machines third parties made successful bids for election. By contrast, given the high degree of institutionalization of the state in France and the strong French parties, it is no wonder that the only direct legislation that France has ever implemented has been initiated by the top in the form of the plebiscite destined to legitimate the power in place rather than to bypass it (see Frei 1995, Luthardt 1994).
6. The scope of mobilization, strength of political parties, and elite divisions
Finally, we should turn to the movement itself and to the scope of its mobilization. Although it seems trivial, it is important to point out that, under conditions of liberal democracies, institutional change implies that a majority of the population is ready to support it. In other words, movements calling for institutional change need to be able to mobilize very broadly, which means that they have to moderate both their action repertoire and their demands. Conversely, the established political elites have to prove unable to control the masses of the citizenry. We maintain that these conditions are most likely to be met, if a) the political parties are weak, if b) the political elite is internally profoundly divided and if c) one of its segments stands to profit from the institutional change. The first condition was met by the Western states of the US and by all Swiss cantons. With respect to the second and third conditions, we may note for the Swiss case that the call for direct democracy came from two types of counter-elites: a conservative and a progressive one (Gilg 1951: 28). Depending on the political context of each canton, the one or the other was more important. On the one hand, the conservatives no doubt hoped that, given the widespread conservatism of the people, the concessions made with respect to direct-democratic procedures would bring them long-term advantages at the polls. On the other hand, it is conceivable that some progressive democrats not only wanted to increase the power of the people, but also pursued some more opportunistic goals: they may have calculated that breaking the power of the money aristocracy by the introduction of direct-democratic devices could not only serve to reinforce popular sovereignty, but could also be instrumental for the electoral success of the progressive leadership that led the way to introduce it. In the American case, there is a correlation between the rise of the progressive movement and the 1896 change from a two-party to a single-party system (Shefter 1994: 75). Excluded from power, the counter-elite looked to social movements for an alternative to regain control of the political process.
a) Weakness of political parties
In the case of the democratic movement of Zurich, we have seen that the crisis hit all sectors of society. This means that there was a latent potential for mobilization which extended to almost the entire population. On the basis of this widespread discontent, and armed with its powerful master-frame, the movement was able to mobilize enormously. In fact, the movement mobilized the entire society. Everybody took part in the conflict: while participation in parliamentary elections had been down to no more than a third in the 1850s, the election of the constituent assembly in 1868 mobilized no less than 94% of the citizens. This mobilization was based on a network of associations. Among these associations we find the whole gamut of cultural and political associations of the time (Schaffner 1982: 43): Monthly, Sunday-, Monday- and reading societies, permanent residents', elderlies', artisans', communal and district associations. There were also so called "political associations", the precursors of the future party organizations, the formation of which was sped up by the democratic movement. Schaffner counted no less than 75 assemblies organized by these associations in the three month period between November 1867 and January 1868. In these "micro-mobilization contexts" the adherents of the movement met to form an opinion and to deliberate about the new paradigm. These assemblies constituted the "reasoning public" as it is conceived in the structural model of Habermas (1990).
Even more important perhaps is the fact that the Democratic movement was the first, according to Gruner (1968), to have developed a political "machine", that is an organization designed to control the votes on a broad basis. Political parties, in Zurich and Switzerland in general, had not yet developed their own organizational apparatus and rarely held conventions. Thus, it is only after their defeat in the 1868 elections that the Liberals engaged in a process of counter-organization and created workers' associations (Gruner 1968: 581). The introduction of direct democratic devices in Swiss cantonal and federal constitutions accelerated this process of party-building so that, in the words of Gruner, political parties are truly "children of direct legislation".
According to Shefter, the weakness of political parties and their lack of organizational development before the rise of the populist and progressive movements is a major factor explaining the success of reforms for direct legislation in the US, too. He argues that the success of the progressive movement in the Western states of the US is a result of the fact that, contrary to the situation in the East, political parties had not yet developed into strong and broad-based organizations in the West. Shefter shows that before the crucial election of 1896 both abstentionism and volatility of the votes were high in the Western, but low in the Eastern states, where mass-based political machines were able to control the votes. In other words, in the West the populists and the progressives moved into a vacuum, while these movements proved unable to destroy the heavy political machines against which they mobilized in the East. Moreover, as is claimed by Clemens (1997), the party-centered system in the East also limited the impact of interest groups. In the West, the same interest groups could contribute, at a particular historical moment, to a broad movement for reform. Here, feminists, workers and farmers, but also specific business interest groups flourished and constituted the organizational base for a strong movement that would mobilize successfully against the weak political machines.
b) Elite divisions
The democratic movement of Zurich was led by a segment of the established political elite. At its head we find the ex-chancellor of the canton-Johann Jakob Sulzer, who became the president of the constituent assembly, and Salomon Bleuler, the editor in chief of the Landboten, the second newspaper of the canton. Among the leaders of the movement there were several pastors and conservatives from the countryside, but it also had a very active left wing with, among others, Karl Bürkli (Craig 1988: 268f.). Based on the composition of the constituent assembly, we may note with Schaffner (1982: 71ff.) that the large majority of its members had already held a political office- either on the cantonal, district or communal levels. Moreover, the majority of those who had not yet held such an office in the past came from the liberal professions-physicians, veterinarians, pastors, or were civil servants, teachers or millers. Given that the constituent assembly was dominated by the Democrats, these data indicate that the leaders of the movement represented a political counter-elite that was already well integrated into the political system rather than "new men" rising from below. The leaders of the movement constituted nothing else but the political opposition of the government dominated by the Liberals. After the adoption of the new constitution this counter-elite won the cantonal elections of 1869 and was to dominate the cantonal government for the next ten years. In fact, as is pointed out by Craig (1988: 275), once the question of direct democracy was settled, the remaining differences between the Liberals and the Democrats were minor ones, apart from the fact that they were led by different personalities. Both parties were oriented towards the center and both had no penchant for ideological polarization. In this sense, the Zurich democratic movement is a case of a deeply divided political elite, with the opposition having recourse to the mobilization of the masses in order to reinforce its own position, and being able to mobilize on an impressive scale, given the lack of party organizations allowing the dominant part of the political elite to control the masses.
In other cantons, direct legislation was supported by the Conservative party in the opposition. Deploige (1898: 83) mentions the case of Bern. In Bern, the Radical majority had voted subsidies for new railroads which exceeded the ordinary revenue of the state. The conservative minority thereupon called for the introduction of the financial referendum with the explicit goal to prevent any further increase of the budget deficit. Similarly, Epple (1996) points out that the democratic movement in Basel-country combined its call for direct-democratic instruments with a call for tax cuts. Its goal was not only to save money, but also to prevent the expansion of the cantonal state. The first attempt to introduce direct democratic instruments in Zurich in 1842, had actually been made by the Conservatives who had just overthrown the Radical government three years before. The Conservatives in Zurich were determined to follow the lead of their conservative colleagues in Lucern, who had successfully introduced the veto against the opposition of the Liberals, who regarded the institution as reactionary.
Elite divisions have also been an important factor in the US and historiography traditionally describes the progressive movement in terms of the rise of a counter-elite (see Clemens 1997). This movement split both parties- the Democrats and the Republicans. Many prominent Democrats, such as Woodrow Wilson, supported its call for direct legislation. One important reason for the Democrats' support of direct legislation was its appeal to organized labor. The Democrats believed that they would be able to preempt socialism by implementing reforms for "good" government (Auer 1989). In the 1896 presidential elections, the Democrats also supported the "silver movement", in an attempt to coopt the populist movement which, by that time, was controlled by the silver populists (Argersinger 1974). The movement for "good government" also split the Republican camp. In fact, one of its precursors was the "Mugwump", which constituted a wing of the Republican party. And in California, the progressive movement developed as a wing of the Republican party and eventually took control of that party.
Shefter (1994) argues that until the emergence of the single-party system after the 1896 elections, Progressives could play off one party against the other and try to implement reforms from within the two parties. However, with the emergence of the Republicans as the dominant party, the progressive counter-elite was basically excluded from power and it is this very exclusion that led them to look for alternatives outside and against the party system. "The emergence of a one-party regime after the election of 1896", Shefter (1994: 76) observes, "rendered the minority party useless as a vehicle through which individuals and groups without preferential access to the dominant party could challenge those within it; it was now impossible for them to pursue a balance-of-power strategy akin to the one the Mugwumps had employed. The political actors who found it impossible to advance their interests within the party system were joined together by the Progressives in an attack upon the party system". The progressive movement attracted these reform politicians excluded from power and outsiders who did not benefit from the patronage system. The composition of the latter varied from state to state. They could be "shippers in states where the party was tied to a railroad, ... firms that sold in national markets in cities where the machine was tied to businesses that sold in local markets, ... native middle classes where the party drew support from the ethnic working classes" (Shefter 1994:76). They could also include workers who were more or less equally excluded everywhere, suffragists who lacked the right to vote in all the states, and farmers (Clemens 1997).
Even more generally, at the turn of the century party identifications were weakened by the fact that, after the territorial expansion and industrial growth, the regional and the class bases of the two parties cross-cut one another (Clemens 1997). As a result, "strains within the parties accumulated and undermined old loyalties and practices as the nineteenth-century party system was stretched to encompass new groups, new demands, and new techniques."
7. Conclusion
In our attempt to account for the rare occasions, when social movements bring about institutional change, we have followed Smelser's (1963) "value added" logic. According to our reasoning, such change becomes possible only under very restrictive conditions which are illustrated by the social movements that have successfully mobilized for the introduction of direct democratic legislation in Switzerland and in the United States. The first element of the set of conditions that should be fulfilled in order for such movements to have success is a societal crisis (typically an economic crisis) predisposing large parts of the population for fundamental social learning. The second element consists of a master-frame which provides the citizens with a credible alternative to the existing set of institutions. We have argued that such a frame is particularly convincing, if it succeeds in tying the new political paradigm, i.e. the blueprint for the new institutions, to the cultural heritage of the population in question-if, in other words, it succeeds in presenting the non-incremental nature of the change as an incremental adaptation to changing conditions. Third, we stated the obvious by pointing out that the success of the movement demanding institutional change crucially depends on the vulnerability of the existing institutions. According to our argument, federal systems and weakly institutionalized states are generally more vulnerable and, therefore, provide greater opportunities for institutional change than unitary and strong states. Finally, we added that the movement for institutional change has to be able to mobilize on a large scale. We argued that this final condition crucially depends both on the existence of a split in the political elite and the weakness of political parties. The weakness of political parties creates a vacuum of power that movements can use to mobilize for institutional change. Divisions in elites both weaken the control of the governing elite over the mobilizing masses and provide these masses with a capable leadership.
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APPENDIX
Chronological list of the introduction of direct-democratic devices in the Swiss cantons and American states.
| date | state/canton/type of instrument |
| 1815 | reestablishment of the Landsgemeinden in Uri, Schwyz, Unterwald, Zug, Appenzell, Glaris |
| 1831 | mandatory constitutional referendum in: St.Gall, Turgovie, Argovie, Lucerne; constitutional initiative and legislative veto in St.Gall |
| 1830s | mandatory constitutional referendum for all cantons, except Neuch‰tel and Fribourg |
| 1832 | legislative veto in B‰ le-campagne |
| 1839 | legislative veto in Valais |
| 1841 | legislative veto in Lucerne |
| 1842 | legislative veto fails to pass in Zurich and Soleure |
| 1844 | Valais (veto becomes mandatory legislative referendum) |
| 1845 | optional legislative referendum and constitutional initiative in Valais |
| 1845 | legislative initiative and optional legislative referendum in Vaud |
| 1846 | optional legislative referendum in Bern |
| 1848 | Landsgemeinde is abolished and replaced by mandatory constitu tional referen dum and constitutional initiative in Zug and Schwyz, mandatory constitutional referendum in Fribourg et Neuch‰tel |
| 1848 | Valais adopts the representative system |
| 1849 | optional legislative referendum in Schwyz |
| 1850 | optional veto in Turgovie |
| 1852 | optional veto and constitutional initiative in Schaffouse; constitutional initiative in Argovie; financial referendum and constitutional initiative in Valais |
| 1853 | Grisons subtitutes the federalist referendum by the optional referendum |
| 1856 | optional referendum in Soleure |
| 1858 | financial referendum in Neuch‰tel |
| 1861 | financial referendum in Vaud |
| 1863 | mandatory legislative referendum in Argovie; legislative initiative in Basel-Country |
| 1867 | optional legislative referendum in Obwald |
| 1868 | mandatory legislative referendum in Lucerne |
| 1869 | legislative initiative in Zurich, Turgovie and Soleure; mandatory legislative referendum in Zurich, Turgovie and Soleure; mandatory financial referendum in Bern; optional financial referendum in Turgovie and Lucerne |
| 1870 | legislative initiative and mandatory legislative referendum in Argovie |
| 1880 | legislative initiative in Grisons |
| 1882 | legislative initiative Neuch‰tel |
| 1890 | legislative initiative in Geneva |
| 1891 | legislative initiative in Tessin |
| 1892 | legislative initiative in Berne |
| 1906 | legislative initiative in Lucerne |
| 1907 | legislative initiative in Valais |
| 1910 | legislative initiative in Argovie |
| 1920 | legislative initiative Fribourg |
| 1888 | Los Angeles |
| 1898 | South Dakota |
| 1899 | St.Francisco |
| 1900 | Utah |
| 1902 | Oregon |
| 1904 | Nevada (referendum only) |
| 1906 | Montana |
| 1907 | Oklahoma |
| 1908 | Maine, Missouri |
| 1910 | Arkansas, Colorado |
| 1911 | Arizona, California, New Mexico (referendum only) |
| 1912 | Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada (initiative only), Ohio, Washington |
| 1913 | Michigan |
| 1914 | North Dakota |
| 1915 | Kentuky (referendum only), Maryland (referendum only) |
| 1918 | Massachussetts |
| 1959 | Alaska |
| 1968 | Florida (constitutional initiative only), Wyoming |
| 1970 | Illinois (constitutional initiative only) |
| 1977 | District of Columbia |
