by Leopold Kohr
This piece was originally published in Home! A Bioregional Reader, edited by Van Andruss, Christopher Plant, Judith Plant, and Eleanor Wright, New Society Publishers, copyright 1990.
The basis of the success of Switzerland is not that she is a federation of three nationalities, but a federation of twenty-two states, the cantons which, far from uniting her unequal national blocks, have divided them into so many small pieces that no single federal unit has a sizeable preponderance over any other. By this, the essential precondition of every well-functioning federation was created: a pattern which furnishes harmony and manageability by ensuring the physical and numerical balance of all participants on a small enough scale to enable even a weak central authority to execute its decisions.
The greatness of the Swiss idea is thus the smallness of the cells from which it derives its guarantees. The Swiss from Geneva does not confront the Swiss from Zurich as a German to a French confederate, but as a confederate from the Republic of Geneva to a confederate from the Republic of Zurich. The citizen of German-speaking Uri is as much a foreigner to the citizen of German-speaking Unterwalden as he is to the citizen of Italian-speaking Ticino. Just as there is no intermediary Prairie government between Wisconsin and Washington, so there is no intermediary government between the canton of St. Gallen and the Swiss federation in the form of a German-speaking sub-federation. The power delegated to Berne derives from the small member republic and not from the nationality. For Switzerland is a union of states, not of nations.
That is why it is important to realize that in Switzerland there live (in rough numbers) 700,000 Bernese, 650,000 Zurichois, 160,000 Genevese, etc., and not 2,500,000 Germans, 1,000,000 French, and 500,000 Italians. The great number of proud, democratic, and almost sovereign cantons, and the small number of the individual cantonal populations, eliminate all possible imperialist ambitions on the part of any one canton, because it would always be outnumbered by even a very small combination of others which at all times would be at the disposal of the federal government….
One final point should be made with regard to the small unit as the only workable basis of social organization. It underlies not only all successful federal government, but all government, federal as well as centralized. In other words, it represents not only a principle of government, but the principle of government, and politics—however incredible this may appear to the politicians of failure—cannot disregard it any more than physics can disregard the principle of gravity.
Excerpted from The Breakdown of Nations. London & New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957.
Leopold Kohr (1909-1994) was a political scientist, economist, professor, and self-described philosophical anarchist. The small town near Salzburg, Austria where he grew up forever shaped his ideal of a small and close community, counter to what he called the “cult of bigness.” He was also influenced by the models of government he witnessed while serving as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War. In 1983, he received the Right Livelihood Award for his “early inspiration of the movement for a human scale.” His influence on the bioregional movement continues to reverberate through both his own work and those he influenced, including his student E.F. Schumacher, the author of Small Is Beautiful.
