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Federalism, Subsidiarity and Education Policy in Switzerland

Switzerland's education system is among the most decentralized systems in the world (Heidenheimer 1997, Blumenthal 1991). In the recent surveys of the educational systems of its member countries, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 1993, 1995, 1998) concluded that the national government of Switzerland plays practically no role in educational decision-making. According to the OECD reports, nine out of ten decisions in Swiss education policy are taken at 'intermediary levels,' that is, the level of the local community (44 per cent) or the regional government (46 percent) (OECD 1993: 134). Switzerland's low ranking in terms of national government influence on education policy and the fact that most decisions are taken at the level of regional governments, the so-called cantons, seems to substantiate the view that the Swiss polity is among the most decentralized of the advanced industrial societies (Bogdanor, 1988; Linder, 1994; Steinberg, 1996). It is surprising, however, that Switzerland also ranks lowest among the OECD countries in decisions taken at the level of the individual school, arguably the most decentralized level of educational decision-making, with less than one out of ten choices made by teachers and principals. How can this puzzle of decentralization at the national level and centralization at the cantonal level be explained? Switzerland's federal system provides for the autonomy of the 26 Swiss cantons in educational policy. Cantonal autonomy comes clearly at the expense of a weak national government that has almost no legislative or administrative authority in the education sector, except for areas such as vocational training and university education (Heidenheimer, 1997). Considerable differences, however, exist at the regional level. Some Swiss cantons exercise their educational authority through strong, centralized state bureaucracies, whereas others have delegated most legislative and administrative tasks to local governments (Hega, 1999). This article will show that the distinction between cantons with decentralized education systems and those with centralized educational policies clearly runs along the language divide of Switzerland. The predominantly Francophone cantons of western Switzerland and the Italianspeaking canton of Ticino, jointly known as the Suisse romande, govern