During World War I and World War II, Switzerland maintained a stance of armed neutrality, and apart from minor skirmishes was not involved militarily. Because of its neutral status, Switzerland was of considerable interest to the warring parties, as a scene for diplomacy, espionage, commerce, and as a safe haven for refugees.
During World War I, Switzerland was situated between the Central Powers to the north and east, and the Entente Powers to the south and west. During World War II, Switzerland was entirely surrounded by the Axis Powers from 1940 to 1944.
Women were granted the right to vote in the first Swiss cantons in 1959, at the federal level in 1971[5] and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden in 1990. After suffrage at the federal level women quickly rose in political significance, with the first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive being Elisabeth Kopp who served from 1984 to 1989. The first female president was Ruth Dreifuss, elected in 1998 to become president during 1999. The Swiss president is elected every year from those among the seven member high council and cannot serve two consecutive terms.
The Demographics of Switzerland has changed in similar ways as in other states in Western Europe. Since 1945, the population of Switzerland has grown from roughly 4.5 to 7.5 million, mostly between 1945 and 1970, with a brief negative growth in the late 1970s, and a population growth hovering around 0.5% per year since the 1990s, mostly due to immigration. With a population composed of a roughly balanced combination of Roman Catholics and Protestants, together amounting to more than 95%, the population without any religious affiliation has grown to more than 10% in the 2000s, while the Muslim population grew from practically nil to some 4% over the past decades. Italians had been the largest group of resident foreigners since the 1920, but with the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, large-scale immigration of refugees has changed this picture, and residents with origins in the former Yugoslavia now constitute the largest group of resident foreigners, with some 200,000 people (roughly 3% of the population).
With the exception of Liechtenstein, Switzerland has been completely surrounded by the European Union since 1995. Swiss-EU relations are a major issue in the country.
In February 2014, Swiss voters approved a referendum to reinstitute quotas on immigration to Switzerland, setting off a period of finding an implementation that would not violate the EU's freedom of movement accords that Switzerland adopted.
^Holenstein, André (2012). "Die Hauptstadt existiert nicht". UniPress – Forschung und Wissenschaft an der Universität Bern (scientific article) (in German). 152 (Sonderfall Hauptstatdtregion). Berne: Department Communication, University of Berne: 16–19. doi:10.7892/boris.41280. S2CID178237847. Als 1848 ein politisch-administratives Zentrum für den neuen Bundesstaat zu bestimmen war, verzichteten die Verfassungsväter darauf, eine Hauptstadt der Schweiz zu bezeichnen und formulierten stattdessen in Artikel 108: "Alles, was sich auf den Sitz der Bundesbehörden bezieht, ist Gegenstand der Bundesgesetzgebung." Die Bundesstadt ist also nicht mehr und nicht weniger als der Sitz der Bundesbehörden. [In 1848, when a political and administrative centre was being determined for the new federation, the founders of the constitution abstained from designating a capital city for Switzerland and instead formulated in Article 108: "Everything, which relates to seat of the authorities, is the subject of the federal legislation." The federal city is therefore no more and no less than the seat of the federal authorities.]
^Elgie, Robert (2016). "Government Systems, Party Politics, and Institutional Engineering in the Round". Insight Turkey. 18 (4): 79–92. ISSN1302-177X. JSTOR26300453.
^Swiss nuclear bombInternational Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War October 9, 2010. Retrieved March 6, 2014
Further reading
Bonjour, E., H. S. Offler, G. R. Potter. A Short History of Switzerland (1952) online
Church, Clive H., and Randolph C. Head. A Concise History of Switzerland (Cambridge University Press, 2013). pp 132–61 online
Codevilla, Angelo M. Between the Alps and a Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and the Rewriting of History (2000) excerpt and text search
Dawson, William Harbutt. Social Switzerland: Studies of Present-day Social Movements and Legislation (1897) 302 pp; with focus on social and economic history, poverty, labour online
Fahrni, Dieter. An Outline History of Switzerland. From the Origins to the Present Day (8th ed. 2003, Pro Helvetia, Zürich).
Lerner, Marc. A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848 (Brill, 2011).
Luck, James Murray. A History of Switzerland. The First 100,000 Years: Before the Beginnings to the Days of the Present. SPOSS, Palo Alto CA. (1985)
Lüthi, Barbara, and Damir Skenderovic, eds. Switzerland and Migration: Historical and Current Perspectives on a Changing Landscape (Springer, 2019).
Oechsli, Wilhelm. History of Switzerland, 1499–1914 (1922) full text online
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