site banner
Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1073 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 23

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Switzerland

Switzerland held elections this Sunday as well:

Polls suggest the Swiss have three main preoccupations in mind: rising fees for the obligatory, free market-based health insurance system; climate change, which has eroded Switzerland’s numerous glaciers - and worries about migrants and immigration.

The last of these apparently loomed large, with right wing populists as the largest winners in the Assembly, though still nowhere near a majority:

The right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), Switzerland's biggest political party, increased its share of the vote to 29%, 3.4 percentage points higher than the last election in 2019, according to the final projection by Swiss broadcaster SRF…

"We have problems with immigration, illegal immigrants, and problems with the security of energy supply," said SVP leader Marco Chiesa. "We already have asylum chaos ... A population of 10 million people in Switzerland is a topic we really have to solve."...

Rising health costs also looked set to benefit the left-wing Social Democrats (SP). Switzerland's second-biggest party was poised to increase its share by 0.7 percentage points of the vote to 17.4%, increasing its representation by one to 40 seats.

In contrast, the Greens were expected to see their share of the votes fall by 4 percentage points to 9%, and lose six seats.

The SPP already held two of the seven seats on the Federal Council and there impressive showing in this election will probably not change that. However, that doesn’t mean the Council won’t change: things in the Senate were too close to call between two other parties, the Centre Party and the Radical Liberals, and they will have to hold another runoff election:

a seat in Switzerland’s seven-member consensus government could at least mathematically be called into question: currently, the “magic formula” of seat allocation gives the Radical-Liberals two ministers and the Centre just one. According to final results, the Centre Party came third with 14.6% of the vote, pipping the Radical-Liberals on 14.4%.

Check out @MartianNight’s more detailed writeup on the election here for more detail!

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats