Direct democracy in the canton of St. Gallen
The direct democracy in the canton of St. Gallen formed in the 19th century with the expansion of people's rights to state and municipal level and the concretization of popular sovereignty .
The canton of St. Gallen achieved a pioneering achievement in 1831 with the introduction of the Volksvetos . It was the result of a political compromise solution between the bourgeois-liberal and rural-democratic currents in the Constitutional Council. The introduction of the veto as a forerunner of the referendum marked the birth of modern democracy in Switzerland.
Sovereignty through alliance politics
The urban settlement formed around the monastery has been under the prince- abbey of St. Gallen since the early Middle Ages . In 1180 the independence began when the German king made St. Gallen a free imperial city , in which he appointed an imperial bailiff from the citizenry, who spoke in his place. In the late Middle Ages , the city and the abbey tried to secure advantages over the other side from the king and emperor. In 1270 there was an organized resistance against the abbot by St. Gallen church people. With its own legislative activity (city statutes in the middle of the 14th century, 1426, 1508, guild regulations) and the introduction of councils, the autonomy of the monastery grew. In the 14th century St. Gallen participated in city federations in the Lake Constance area and from the 15th century with the federal locations.
The attempt by the abbey in 1401 to reclaim unused taxes aroused resistance and led to an alliance with the state of Appenzell . In the Appenzell Wars, St. Gallen fought alongside the Appenzeller and Schwyzers against the prince abbey and the Habsburgs , which in 1412 led to an alliance with the federal Eight Old Towns . 1454 the independent city of St. Gallen Republic was facing site of the Confederation. The attempt of the city to build up a rule through bailiffs and expatriates failed in the St. Gallen War (Rorschacher Klosterbruch).
The Reformation adopted by the city led to a long-standing dispute between the citizens / city and the prince abbot in the monastery courtyard, who owned the entire, now Catholic, surrounding area. This dispute was only settled after the canton was founded.
The emergence of the canton from independent republics
As part of the Helvetic made new allocations Canton in Switzerland, the areas of the Abbey of the city of St. Gallen and Appenzell have been to Canton Säntis summarized.
On March 19, 1803, Napoléon Bonaparte issued an act of mediation to establish the canton of St. Gallen . The area of the canton emerged from the amalgamation of those areas that were left over from the Swiss cantons of Linth and Säntis after the restoration of Glarus , Schwyz and Appenzell and that had not formed a unit before 1798: the only common ground that was neither culturally nor economically or denominational unity was the will for freedom and independence. In 1798 they had all proclaimed independent republics. The first Landammann of St. Gallen, Karl von Müller-Friedberg , played a key role in the establishment of the company. With the canton, the first cantonal constitution was drawn up in 1803.
Uprising and defeat of the rural democrats 1814/15
The attempt to restore the Old Order ( Restoration ) after the end of French influence and its anti-democratic tendencies aroused resistance in the rural population and the old subject areas.
The scattered in Switzerland proclamation of the winner against Napoleon, Prince Schwarzenberg expected, the cantons that their own discretion constitute, residents interpreted the former subject territories in eastern Switzerland as a carte blanche to demand their democratic concern: As a majority of the municipalities in the Sarganserland to Demanded to join the Landsgemeindekanton Glarus, the Grand Council was forced to adopt a new canton constitution in 1814. The ordained election meetings for the cantonal councils led to further unrest.
When the military moved from the capital into the Rhine Valley, they were stopped by the local land storm armed with clubs and rifles . After the Diet sent to Sargans representatives were attacked by the popular movement almost physically, was followed by an intervention of federal troops, because you saw the cantonal integrity questioned. Some European ministers also complained that dismembering the canton of St. Gallen was out of the question. The military and political pressure silenced the St. Gallen people's movement.
Constitutional struggle and compromise for direct democracy 1830/31
The second St. Gallen popular movement took place during the Regeneration , when the neighboring monarchies were preoccupied with themselves after the July Revolution in Paris . Because England, France and Prussia also pursued the principle of non-interference, the emancipation movements under their protection were successful everywhere, including in Switzerland, where many cantonal constitutions were placed on a modern democratic basis.
Joseph Anton Henne kicked off the change in 1830 when he asked the cantonal council members to send in their reports and opinions on the parliamentary debates for publication. In the same year, Gallus Jakob Baumgartner put his pamphlet Wishes and Motions of a Citizen of St. Gallen for Improvement of the State Institutions of this Canton into circulation in forty-seven points . The Grand Council then decided on December 14, 1830 a constitutional revision and spoke out in favor of the principle of popular sovereignty.
A broad popular movement, however, wanted to go further and eliminate the prevailing conditions through a purely democratic constitution. Popular hosts, such as Joseph Eichmüller in Altstätten and Kreuz-Wirt Raymann in St. Gallenkappel as well as landlords in the districts of Uznach and Gaster and near Wattwil organized popular assemblies in which up to 3,000 men took part. In response, the cantonal parliament decided to have a constitutional council elected by the people, whereby the hated census was dropped with immediate effect.
In the course of St. Gallen's regeneration and constitutional development and to support the introduction of the legal veto , the lawyer Franz Anton Good wrote one of the first and most important theoretical texts on direct democracy in 1830, which he published in 1831 after the constitution was adopted under the title Sovereignty and Veto published by the St. Gallic People . The council meeting of December 14, 1830, in which the popular sovereignty of the canton of St. Gallen was pronounced, which would mean a newly recognized dignity for the people in the sense of Pufendorf, was decisive for Good .
On January 7, 1831, the Constitutional Council met, decided to hold its meetings in public and encouraged the people to submit wishes and drafts, which it then did extensively. This change was the result of a coalition of reform-minded liberals and democrats in the Constitutional Council. The reform coalition collapsed when the Democrats threatened to leave the council if the constitution were not based on the principle of direct democracy. When the liberals realized that they would not find a majority with their representative democracy, a compromise proposal with the idea of the veto emerged, which the majority in the Constitutional Council could agree to.
In the rural regions, the debate was followed with suspicion and personal presence, as was the case with Stecklidonstig when around 600 people from the Rhine Valley armed with sticks marched into St. Gallen. On March 23, 1831, the third constitution was adopted by the majority of the men in St. Gallen who were eligible to vote, including those who did not vote. Although the Democrats saw themselves as losers because of this voting trick, the constitution of 1831 brought lasting opportunities for participation at the cantonal level and the veto was the first step towards direct democracy. Since the political debate was now conducted in an open and controllable manner within the framework of a democratically legitimized constitutional council, acts of violence became obsolete.
Peace Constitution from 1861 to the present day
The state-church antagonism between the Catholic-Conservative and the Liberal-Radical camp came to a head and the Great Council elections of 1859, carried out under this influence, ended with a victory for the Conservatives. Arnold Otto Aepli managed to mediate in the passionate party struggle. He became the father of the new, fourth cantonal constitution of 1861. The so-called peace constitution substantially defused the party struggle between radicals and conservatives and thereby laid an important foundation for the canton's prosperous development.
The dispute between democrats and liberals, in which the former preferred direct democracy and the latter the representative system , led to their separation in 1880. A democratic party meeting in Wil in 1888 finally gave the impetus for a democratic constitutional revision, in which, in addition to the older democratic demands (mandatory legal referendum, popular initiative, popular election of the councils of government and states) also new ones (mandatory financial referendum, proportional electoral procedure, jury courts, an expansion of social policy ) should be taken into account.
The Constitutional Council, which met in 1889, was unable to meet all the demands, but reached a compromise for the fifth cantonal constitution of November 16, 1890 between the program of the alliance between the Democrats and the Catholic Conservatives and the program of the liberals: extension of popular rights (popular initiative, popular election government), expansion of social policy and the civic school system.
In 1972 women were given cantonal voting rights.
The sixth constitution in force today was adopted in the referendum on June 10, 2001.
literature
- Ernst Ehrenzeller: The conservative-liberal contrast in the canton of St. Gallen up to the constitutional revision of 1861. St. Gallen, 1947.
- Walter Müller: Free and serf church people from St. Gallen from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century . Volume 101 of Neujahrsblatt, Historical Association of the Canton of St Gallen, Verlag der Fehr'schen Buchhandlung, St. Gallen 1961.
- Bruno Wickli: Political culture and “pure democracy”. Constitutional struggles and rural popular movements in the canton of St. Gallen 1814/15 and 1830/31 , St. Gallen 2006.
- Rolf Graber (Ed.): Democratization processes in Switzerland in the late 18th and 19th centuries . Research colloquium as part of the research project “The democratic movement in Switzerland from 1770 to 1870”. An annotated selection of sources. Supported by the FWF / Austrian Science Fund. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna, 2008. 93 p. Series of publications by the International Research Center “Democratic Movements in Central Europe 1770-1850”. Vol. 40 Edited by Helmut Reinalter, ISBN 978-3-631-56525-4 .
- Hans Hiller: The Invention of the Middle. Statesman Arnold Otto Aepli, 1816 - 1897. VGS Verlagsgenossenschaft St. Gallen, 2011. Further publications on Aepli are attached. 88 pp., ISBN 978-3-7291-1128-8 .
- René Roca, Andreas Auer (ed.): Paths to direct democracy in the Swiss cantons . Writings on Democracy Research, Volume 3. Center for Democracy Aarau and Verlag Schulthess AG, Zurich - Basel - Geneva 2011, ISBN 978-3-7255-6463-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christian Kuchimaister, St. Galler chronicler: "Nüwe Casus monasterii Sancti Galli" (Casus St. Galli in German, monastery history from 1226 - 1329)
- ↑ a b Bruno Wickli: Rural popular movements and the breakthrough of direct democracy in the canton of St. Gallen 1814-31, in: René Roca, Andreas Auer (ed.): Paths to direct democracy in the Swiss cantons . Writings on Democracy Research, Volume 3. Center for Democracy Aarau and Verlag Schulthess AG, Zurich - Basel - Geneva, 2011. ISBN 978-3-7255-6463-7
- ^ Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon, 1977, Volume 20, p. 686