Direct democracy in the 19th century

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cc. Like in no other country direct democracy in Switzerland is an essential part of the political culture, but up to now it is historically underexplored. For that reason the “Forschungsinstitut direkte Demokratie” (Research-Institute Direct Democracy; www.fidd.ch) was founded, that aims at closing this gap in research by scientific conferences, publications and lectures.
On the 17 October 2014, the first conference under the title “Beiträge des Katholizismus zur modernen Schweiz” (Catholicism’s Contributions to Modern Switzerland) took place. In two topic blocks the conference attended to the latest insights of research on democracy and education. Contributors from the subject fields history, church history (theology) and education presented their findings at the panel discussions “Katholizismus und direkte Demokratie”  (Catholicism and Direct Democracy) and “Katholizismus und Bildung” (Catholicism and Education). This way the lecturers represented and deepend interdisciplinary aspects. They could show that Catholicism contributed important and basic aspects to modern Switzerland especially both with regard to direct democracy on the one hand and to elementary school and high school on the other hand.
The research results are compiled in the now published volume (editor: René Roca)*. Thereby a new scientific series has been founded planning to publish contributions to the exploration of democracy; volume 2 will deal with the topic “Liberalismus und moderne Schweiz”  (Liberalism and modern Switzerland) and volume 3 will focus on the early socialists. This trilogy, which will examine emergence and development of direct democracy from different political perspectives, is meant to be the foundation to explore additional issues and projects of research, like for instance hypothetical questions about direct democracy.    •

* René Roca is a postgraduate historian with a doctorate and grammar school teacher in Basel. He is the founder and head of the “Forschungsinstitut direkte Demokratie” which holds scientific conferences on a regular basis (<link http: www.fidd.ch>www.fidd.ch).