A quarter of a century ago, Switzerland gave itself a mandate to promote democracy globally. In 2025, the goal remains – but the world is a lot more authoritarian. In 2010, journalist Anne Applebaum took aim at a “silly argument” which had been doing the rounds since the US invasion of Iraq. “The subsequent failure of Iraq to metamorphose overnight into the Switzerland of the Middle East is cited as an example of why democracy should never be pushed or promoted at all,” Applebaum complained in the Washington Post. The reference to Switzerland was a bit fanciful; nobody would have expected a US military intervention to suddenly turn Baghdad into Bern. At the same time, it revealed a truism about the Swiss global image as a rich, stable, multilingual, and highly democratic country. Why shouldn’t it be held up as a model to emulate? Good governance or new governments From Switzerland itself, the tone is rarely so self-promotional. In 1999, as part of a general constitutional overhaul ...
