Adopting the Swiss model = surviving empires?

By "the Swiss model" I mean devolving almost all decision-making to as local a level as possible, leaving the central government in charge of very little other than military and foreign policy. This seems to have worked very well in Switzerland, which despite being divided in various ways (French- vs. German-speaking, Catholic vs. Protestant) managed to weather the age of nationalism without much trouble. (I'm not counting the Sonderbund War, since it lasted less than a month and saw fewer than 100 casualties.)

Do people here think that such a system of government would have had similar success with the big empires as well (Austria/Austria-Hungary, Russia, the European colonial empires)? Or would there have been factors preventing it from working on such a large scale?
 
No i honestly dont think it would have worked all that well for the big empires unlike Switzerland had a shared national identiy that held them together and allowed such a system. For example William Tell celebrates the defiance of a Habsburg monarch showing the idea that the resistance against foreigners was a huge part of Swiss national identity. This allowed the system to work because everyone shared a national identity outside of linguistic or religious statea.

Compare that to the British Empire where the people in India dont exactly share a national identity to people in Britain or Australia because they have different cultures and histories. Here if you simply put all the decision making down to such base levels you end up with an empire simply made up of various self administrating territories with only a shared military and political state to hold them together. At some point these groups will try to break away because they have more of a cultural identity with one another in each region than they do with parts of the empire very far away.

Austria seems like it would be especially bad in this case because of how divided the various peoples actually were. Look at te build up to WW1 where the Austrians wanted one thing (to attack Serbia) but the Hungarians wanted another. In this case the empire has no shared identity that ties Hungarians to Austrians amd vice versa so inevitably you would end up with people trying to break away.
 
Wouldn't work. Empires are about moving decision making authority away from the local level, almost invariably by force. They couldn't move to a Swiss type model and still profit from their empires.
 
No i honestly dont think it would have worked all that well for the big empires unlike Switzerland had a shared national identiy that held them together and allowed such a system. For example William Tell celebrates the defiance of a Habsburg monarch showing the idea that the resistance against foreigners was a huge part of Swiss national identity. This allowed the system to work because everyone shared a national identity outside of linguistic or religious statea.

Compare that to the British Empire where the people in India dont exactly share a national identity to people in Britain or Australia because they have different cultures and histories. Here if you simply put all the decision making down to such base levels you end up with an empire simply made up of various self administrating territories with only a shared military and political state to hold them together. At some point these groups will try to break away because they have more of a cultural identity with one another in each region than they do with parts of the empire very far away.

Austria seems like it would be especially bad in this case because of how divided the various peoples actually were. Look at te build up to WW1 where the Austrians wanted one thing (to attack Serbia) but the Hungarians wanted another. In this case the empire has no shared identity that ties Hungarians to Austrians amd vice versa so inevitably you would end up with people trying to break away.

I suppose that would be the case with Austria and Hungary or Britain and India, but what about Britain and Canada/Australia/NZ? Those countries certainly had (and still have, albeit to a much lesser degree than before) a sense of shared identity.

Wouldn't work. Empires are about moving decision making authority away from the local level, almost invariably by force. They couldn't move to a Swiss type model and still profit from their empires.

I think that's an over-simplistic model. Plenty of empires throughout history have been happy to pretty much leave things as they had been before: the Assyrians, for example, even let the previous monarchs continue in power, provided they didn't rebel; and the various civitates and poleis of the Roman and Greek empires were more-or-less autonomous in managing their internal affairs. Heck, I'd venture to say that Athens under Roman dominion probably had more autonomy than the average British city nowadays. Of course, a lot of this might have been due to practicality rather than anything else (if you're ruling a large amount of land with pre-modern communications, you've essentially got no choice but to leave a lot of things to the local level), but the idea that empires can't be decentralised just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
 
I suppose that would be the case with Austria and Hungary or Britain and India, but what about Britain and Canada/Australia/NZ? Those countries certainly had (and still have, albeit to a much lesser degree than before) a sense of shared identity.

You do have a point and they would probably work better under such a system than, say, India under Britain or South-East Asia under France. But even so I don't see it working in the long run to save Britain and this is something I forgot to mention. In this scenario where Britain does, to some success for the sake of argument, introduce this "Swiss Model" and things don't fall apart immediately. The question then is, what happens when for whatever reason the British themselves can no longer police these regions?

Say in Canada, the majority British army has to pull out for a time to go fight a bigger war against France (because we like fighting France) and suddenly someone attacks Canada or there is an outbreak of violence from rioting. The local leaders suddenly find that the British aren't there to keep this under control save for a few massively outnumbered groups of soldiers and maybe a local police force depending on the year. What do the local leaders do? They deal with it themselves, they raise their own groups to try and protect the people. Once they start policing their own territory with their own mini-military to protect and their people, how long until the start to wonder if they really need Britain? They can protect themselves and their leaders have full control over everything apart from the foreign policy. At this point what reason is there to stay tied to Britain? Even a shared national identity, although strong and important, won't entirely stop Canada from suddenly deciding that it doesn't need Britain any more because everything Britain could do for it, it does for itself. Canada manages it's economy and keeps it up, Britain certainly helps with trade but whose to say that a trade agreement couldn't be reached? Canada also protects itself and administrates itself and has it's own government and people and ideas and education system and everything but a foreign policy. At what point do the people here start to think that they don't need Britain any more so why should they continue to be part of the British Empire? Why not go independent?

BUT in all fairness this might work better for the British in Ireland. While the Irish wouldn't consider themselves entirely British necessarily, they're close enough that the British can continue to protect them and help police at all times while giving them enough independence and local autonomy that Ireland doesn't go to hell and the British shouldn't mess it up too badly.
 
You do have a point and they would probably work better under such a system than, say, India under Britain or South-East Asia under France. But even so I don't see it working in the long run to save Britain and this is something I forgot to mention. In this scenario where Britain does, to some success for the sake of argument, introduce this "Swiss Model" and things don't fall apart immediately. The question then is, what happens when for whatever reason the British themselves can no longer police these regions?

Say in Canada, the majority British army has to pull out for a time to go fight a bigger war against France (because we like fighting France) and suddenly someone attacks Canada or there is an outbreak of violence from rioting. The local leaders suddenly find that the British aren't there to keep this under control save for a few massively outnumbered groups of soldiers and maybe a local police force depending on the year. What do the local leaders do? They deal with it themselves, they raise their own groups to try and protect the people. Once they start policing their own territory with their own mini-military to protect and their people, how long until the start to wonder if they really need Britain? They can protect themselves and their leaders have full control over everything apart from the foreign policy. At this point what reason is there to stay tied to Britain? Even a shared national identity, although strong and important, won't entirely stop Canada from suddenly deciding that it doesn't need Britain any more because everything Britain could do for it, it does for itself. Canada manages it's economy and keeps it up, Britain certainly helps with trade but whose to say that a trade agreement couldn't be reached? Canada also protects itself and administrates itself and has it's own government and people and ideas and education system and everything but a foreign policy. At what point do the people here start to think that they don't need Britain any more so why should they continue to be part of the British Empire? Why not go independent?

BUT in all fairness this might work better for the British in Ireland. While the Irish wouldn't consider themselves entirely British necessarily, they're close enough that the British can continue to protect them and help police at all times while giving them enough independence and local autonomy that Ireland doesn't go to hell and the British shouldn't mess it up too badly.

(IIRC something like that actually happened in WW2, when the Japanese looked set to invade Australia and the British were too overstretched to spare a proper defence force.)

I guess it depends on how long your "long run" is. Obviously no empire is going to survive indefinitely, and sooner or later any political system will break down (even Switzerland's :p ). Still, a polity with a suitable political system will, ceteris paribus, have a longer lease of life than one with a less suitable system.
 
I suppose that would be the case with Austria and Hungary or Britain and India, but what about Britain and Canada/Australia/NZ? Those countries certainly had (and still have, albeit to a much lesser degree than before) a sense of shared identity.



I think that's an over-simplistic model. Plenty of empires throughout history have been happy to pretty much leave things as they had been before: the Assyrians, for example, even let the previous monarchs continue in power, provided they didn't rebel; and the various civitates and poleis of the Roman and Greek empires were more-or-less autonomous in managing their internal affairs. Heck, I'd venture to say that Athens under Roman dominion probably had more autonomy than the average British city nowadays. Of course, a lot of this might have been due to practicality rather than anything else (if you're ruling a large amount of land with pre-modern communications, you've essentially got no choice but to leave a lot of things to the local level), but the idea that empires can't be decentralised just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Indeed it is over-simplistic, it was a three sentence post.

In any of these places did the Empire collect taxes or impose laws? If they did, and I'm certain they did, did they ask permission of the locals first? If they didn't, and I'm certain they didn't, then they are not bringing authority closer to a local level, but taking it further from the local level.

Empires can be decentralized, almost all of them include a distinction between Metropole and Hinterland, and usually some pretty fine distinctions within the Hinterland, it just doesn't work on the Swiss model.


It could be true that Athens under Rome had more independence than Birmingham under London, but then again, Athenians didn't generally get to vote for policies that Rome imposed on them.
 
It could be true that Athens under Rome had more independence than Birmingham under London, but then again, Athenians didn't generally get to vote for policies that Rome imposed on them.

Neither did the Romans, at least after Augustus.
In a sense, the Roman Empire was indeed a federation of mostly self-governing city-states who "agreed" (under threat of force) to delegate their defence/security to a paramount city and paid for it (the implicit threat of destruction if they did not was very clearly there, of course).
The Swiss analogy does not work in that those self-governing entities had no representation at the central level, except, erratically, through the Senate (whose system of membership selection in Imperial times is not clear to me, but I am sure that it was never meant to be representative of single city states or provinces).
It is also worth noting that, whenever a Classical city-state fell under an Imperial hegemony, be it Persian, Macedonian, Syracusan or Roman, it tended to switch to a more oligarchic or tyrannical political system (we lack data for the Carthaginian hegemony, but what can be gleaned from epigraphy seems to suggests this was the case there too). This was not universal, but common enough to suggest a pattern. The glaring exception is, of course, the Athenian Empire, for highly specific reasons; and even in that case, the Athenian policy of promoting democracy in subordinated poleis was hardly constant or consistent.
 
I suppose that would be the case with Austria and Hungary or Britain and India, but what about Britain and Canada/Australia/NZ? Those countries certainly had (and still have, albeit to a much lesser degree than before) a sense of shared identity.

Maybe for Australia/NZ, but Canada's substantial francophone minority wouldn't be too enthused.
 
The Swiss model of gov't only works in smaller, poorer countries with poor roads.
The key difference is Energy Return On Investment.
The Swiss model is primarily about each valley/canyon governing itself. The Swiss Confederation (Conferation Helvetica) was invented to unite mountain tribes against invaders (Roman Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, French Royal Empire, etc.).
Swiss roads were so poor (e.g. mountain passes closed all winter by snow) that invading armies would never be able to extract enough taxes to pay for occupying armies.
The other factor is that so little Swiss land is arable - and has such short growing seasons - that it barely supported Swiss farmers. There was precious little agricultural surplus available for export .... and even less surplus food to pay taxes.
Several empires tried and failed because they could never extract enough taxes from marginal Swiss farms.
Heck!
For many centuries, Switzerland was so poor that they exported soldiers to fight for those neighbouring Empires!

The other issue is the cost of transportation and communication. As empires get bigger, they need to devote more and more energy to improving roads, bridges, canals, ports, etc. to transport food surpluses back to the capital city.
Large empires also need large, complex and fast communications networks to move ever increasing amounts of data to the capital city ... where most decisions are made.

Finally, the Swiss model of gov't is the lesser of the evils. Many centuries ago, the various Swiss cantons concluded that they could not afford wars of conquest ... nor could they afford to align themselves with empires that launched wars of conquest ... so they limited their alliances to other poor mountain tribes with similar (limited) ambitions.

IOW the Swiss Confederation is a pragmatic, political solution for a poor country.
 
I suppose that would be the case with Austria and Hungary or Britain and India, but what about Britain and Canada/Australia/NZ? Those countries certainly had (and still have, albeit to a much lesser degree than before) a sense of shared identity.



I think that's an over-simplistic model. Plenty of empires throughout history have been happy to pretty much leave things as they had been before: the Assyrians, for example, even let the previous monarchs continue in power, provided they didn't rebel; and the various civitates and poleis of the Roman and Greek empires were more-or-less autonomous in managing their internal affairs. Heck, I'd venture to say that Athens under Roman dominion probably had more autonomy than the average British city nowadays. Of course, a lot of this might have been due to practicality rather than anything else (if you're ruling a large amount of land with pre-modern communications, you've essentially got no choice but to leave a lot of things to the local level), but the idea that empires can't be decentralised just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Those kinds of empires are generally quite fragile.Even the Roman Empire had a high degree of centralized control.They might leave control of particular city to the locals,but they certainly won't let provincials run the entire province as they saw fit.

Also,the Assyrian Empire is actually rather small.
 
Indeed it is over-simplistic, it was a three sentence post.

In any of these places did the Empire collect taxes or impose laws?

It depends on which period you're talking about. During the 3rd century BC, the allied cities had to supply troops and supplies during times of war, but that was pretty much it. Later the Romans started collecting more regular tribute, although even then that regularity might just have been because the Romans were always at war with somebody or other during this period.

As for laws, Rome generally didn't interfere with the internal affairs of its cities, unless they were asked to by the city itself or unless the city had fallen into civil unrest. Sometimes the government in Rome passed laws trying to stamp out practices deemed hazardous to public safety (e.g., the SC de Bacchanalibus), but those were the exceptions, and even then enforcement was usually left to the local communities.

If they didn't, and I'm certain they didn't, then they are not bringing authority closer to a local level, but taking it further from the local level.

*Some* authority is taken from the local level, obviously. This doesn't preclude a large amount of decentralisation.

Those kinds of empires are generally quite fragile.Even the Roman Empire had a high degree of centralized control.They might leave control of particular city to the locals,but they certainly won't let provincials run the entire province as they saw fit.

Assyrian-style empires were usually fragile; Rome certainly wasn't.

Roman provinces were basically military districts. Whilst you did get some civil government carried out at a provincial level (courts of appeals, etc.), most of this was carried out at the city or tribal level.
 
Do people here think that such a system of government would have had similar success with the big empires as well (Austria/Austria-Hungary, Russia, the European colonial empires)? Or would there have been factors preventing it from working on such a large scale?
I´ll throw in my two cents concerning Austria-Hungary.
Let´s keep in mind that the Swiss Confederacy formed in explicit rivalry and opposition to the Habsburg monarchy.
And let´s not romanticise Switzerland. It wasn`t all democracy, equality and local self-determination. Much of the time, it was about patricians and guild leaderships finding new ways of extending their control and extracting profits in a changing world.
And yet, on the territory of the pre-Ottoman Kingdom of Hungary, the free cities and districts of the "Saxons" and the Szekely bore a great degree of resemblance to the Swiss model of organisation, and so did their alliance of the Three Nations. In the Middle Ages, thus, we obviously have the roots of what you`re calling for.
Could this have been the path taken by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy later on? Only if the ruling monarchy is less of a powerful monolithic bloc. If there were more fractures, factions, infights, then the space opens up for smaller players to enter the stage and set constituting examples. But then again, if Austria-Hungary were disunited, they would not have become an empire.
Once become an absolutist monarchy, the Swiss model is no longer on the table.
 
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