caa a22 4500 386321256 CHVBK 20180307111627.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1988 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0017257X00016985 doi S0017257X00016985 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0017257X00016985 Steinberg Jonathan Imitation of Switzerland: Historical Reflections [Elektronische Daten] [Jonathan Steinberg] CAN THE SWISS CONFEDERATION BE IMITATED? THAT DEPENDS, says the historian, on what you mean by imitation. Switzerland has certainly served as a model for others, sometimes a model distinctly not to be imitated. When the American Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to write a new constitution and ‘to form a more perfect Union', they had Switzerland in mind. Alexander Hamilton, a chief actor in that enterprise, devoted part of an issue of The Federalist Papers, written the following year as a defence of what the framers had drafted, to a close analysis of the Swiss Confederation. Switzerland did not impress him: The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a confederacy, though it is sometimes cited as an instance of the stability of such institutions. They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no common coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common part of sovereignty ... He recognised that they were held together ‘by their joint interest' but saw the confederacy as a poor guarantor of internal and external coherence. ‘Whatever efficacy the union may have had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference sprang up capable of trying its strength it failed.' Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1988 Government and Opposition Cambridge University Press 23/1(1988), 13-30 0017-257X 23:1<13 1988 23 GOV https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017257X00016985 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017257X00016985 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Steinberg Jonathan NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Government and Opposition Cambridge University Press 23/1(1988), 13-30 0017-257X 23:1<13 1988 23 GOV CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge