I found the Swiss federal spirit! It is in Swiss Cinquième Ligue of football

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Nicolò Alessi

21 December 2021

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I found the Swiss federal spirit! It is in Swiss Cinquième Ligue of football

A great deal of literature has addressed the interconnections between existing federal structures and their societal substratum. The general statement on this matter is that not only does the society itself affect the very institution of a federal system, it also plays an important role in shaping its functioning. And, arguably, this is as well true the other way around.

My one-year research stay in Fribourg, Switzerland has all but confirmed this, although not specifically in the form imagined by, among others, W.S. Livingston and M. Burgess.¹ In fact, it was football that showed me how deep the interiorization in society of some fundamental elements featuring the Swiss federal form of government, is.

In August 2021, I was literally dying to find a way to socialize in Switzerland, after the easing of the Covid measures which had started in spring, and I eventually found a football team based in Fribourg. So, I began my experience at F.C. La Centrale, team La Trois, which plays in the fifth Swiss league - Switzerland’s lowest.

The very first day of training I was introduced to everybody. It immediately felt like there was something different from my previous experiences, something curious. It was indeed impossible to tell who the coach was. “I only see players here, who will be leading the training, managing the matches and all this stuff?”, I wondered. The answer was as clear as it was surprising. “No coach, or, better, we all are the coach”, my teammate Alex told me. “This year, we have agreed to share the burden and the pleasure of coaching.” In other words, a self-governing team composed of equals, with different backgrounds country-wise and football-wise, all having the same dignity as players and as managers. According to this principle, every week a different group of two-four teammates is assigned the task of planning the training, as well as defining the initial lineup and the successive substitutions for the match. Put differently, this means that the executive figure who leads the team is not a single person, but following a system of rotation, everyone gets a chance. “Plus, when it comes to matches, we are all supposed to play, no one should be left on the bench for the entire game”. All the members of the team are taken into consideration and everybody is meant to participate. Equal dignity, respect for all the members, self-government, shared government, cooperation, rotation, participation. This must sound familiar to federal scholars. These are indeed all foundational elements of the Swiss federal system, a federal institutional structure informed by consociational principles and a strong cooperative political culture. Probably it makes no sense to look for an explanation as to how much the federal structures affected the society or the other way around, precisely because this is not the critical point as regards this experience. What is instead interesting is that the society reproduces federal principles, and the government structures reproduce societal dynamics: they are inextricably intermingled.

Well, that is true, this is not a unique example in the history of football, and others were much more difficult to handle and had way more success, both in terms of visibility and results. Who, passionate of football, does not fondly remember the self-managed Democracia Corinthiana team (with “Doctor” Socrates) which won the Paulista league?

But there is a difference, I guess. The Democracia Corinthiana model was a revolutionary experience. The La Trois’s model is part of ordinary life, it is something that no one perceives as something imposed, odd or exceptional. It follows specific principles that are not only consciously accepted but also somewhat intrinsically understood and shared. That is how things go in Switzerland.

Nicolò Alessi

Nicolò is a post-doctoral researcher in Comparative Public Law at Institute of Political Science and the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern. He was adjunct professor of Comparative Public Law at the University of Aosta Valley, junior researcher at the Institute for comparative federalism at Eurac research and guest researcher at the Institute of federalism of Fribourg/Freiburg. His main research interests are Italian and Comparative Constitutional Law, Diversity accommodation, Minority Rights, Autonomy Studies, and Federalism. He is sporty and very competitive, but at the same time always grappling with impostor syndrome. His next project: a little semi-serious guide to PhD, which is mainly a cathartic experience.