Evelyne Schmid

Projects

Projects FNS

Bypassing the Nation State? How Swiss Cantonal Parliaments Deal with International Obligations
2019 - 2023 (48 mois)
Applicant : Evelyne Schmid
Other partners : Martino Maggetti
We are building a research team of legal and political science researchers to answer two tightly connected questions. First, we want to find out through which formal and informal mechanisms cantonal parliaments and other actors involved in cantonal legislative processes engage with international obligations that require them to legislate. Second, we would like to know when and how cantonal parliaments engage the most and explain variations in the patterns of engagement and eventually implementation of international law. In this context, a special attention will be given to parliamentary structures and mechanisms in Swiss cantons that potentially support cantonal legislative actors to recognise, influence, defy or fulfil international obligations, such as proposals and messages by the cantonal and federal executives, the set-up of the secretariat, parliamentary committees, consultation procedures, the solicitation by federal agencies of cantonal information for the reporting to international supervisory organs or the practice of intercantonal conventions and conferences. We will base our analysis on an examination of the status quo and on an empirical comparative cross-case study in selected cantons to allow for sufficient variation in the variables of interest while enabling cross-case comparability. By focusing on Switzerland as a crucial case, this research has fundamental and wider implications for the study the domestic implications of international law, parliamentarism and for the scholarship on the 'denationalisation' of the nation-state. Notably, our analysis will provide a nuanced conceptual and empirical basis for discussing the complex relationship between international law and the Swiss legal and political system. It will also enlighten and qualify the debate about either a near complete loss of discretion of the subnational legislator or, vice versa, arguments about a lack of influence of international law on subnational lawmaking processes.