For most of my life, people have offered joyful shouts when I have presented either of my passports, or answered the question of where I come from. They have positive associations with my two home countries, Switzerland and Sweden, even if they confused them for each other.

I was born and raised in Switzerland. I have spent most of my adult life in Sweden. So, when I’m pressed to pick between them, I simply answer, “Choose whatever you want.”

That makes some sense, because my countries have some things in common. They are two of Europe’s—and the world’s—oldest and most advanced democracies. For a long time, they also were both neutral countries—but they weren’t neutral in the same way.

Both adhered to the core tenet of neutrality: for at least two centuries, neither engaged in wars. “This commonality sometimes made [the two countries] forget our big differences,” said Jacob Westberg, a professor of war studies and military history at the Swedish Defense University in Stockholm.

But the last few years have changed things for these countries, and for neutrality itself.

This Zeitenwende, or tipping point, began with Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022. That same year, Westberg published “How Small States Manage to Stay out of Wars: Explaining Sweden’s 200 Years of Peace,” in which he described the success story of both Sweden and Switzerland (along with other small countries) as neutral states.

But in 2023, he published a new book called Security Strategies: From Neutrality Policy to the Application for NATO Membership (currently only available in Swedish) that charts Sweden’s path to renouncing neutrality and joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an organization aligned with U.S. interests.

Sweden was prompted to make the epochal shift of stepping away from neutrality by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s threats against Europe. On March 7 of this year Sweden became a NATO member.

That means that Sweden is no longer a neutral country. (I repeat, for those who confuse the two, Sweden is no longer a neutral country. President Joe Biden mistakenly announced that “Switzerland” wanted to join NATO.)

So, my two countries are parting ways. Neutrality no more, says Stockholm, teaming up with Washington, while Bern clings to its successful formula—for now.

But this divergence isn’t a surprise because of the different visions of neutrality that Switzerland and Sweden have long held. This divergence stems from three big differences—those of history, practice, and geography.

First: History. Switzerland and Sweden both ended their warmongering at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, where “neutrality” for the first time entered international law. But the countries had distinct rationales for laying down their arms.

For centuries, Swedish monarchs had tried to defend their kingdom by engaging in foreign wars against their neighbors. They finally abandoned this strategy after losing Finland and being defeated by Russia in 1809.

Switzerland, meanwhile, was never an imperial power. After it lost its final battle abroad just over the border in northern Italy in 1515, the states of the old Swiss confederation spent centuries engaged in searching for balance domestically.

This internal scrutiny ended at that same Congress of Vienna. That was when Tsar Alexander I of Russia proposed that Switzerland, which at that time was a federation of 22 states, become a neutral country. Together they later funded modern “Switzerland” with a central government, an army, and its own currency. It’s been that way ever since.

Second: Practice. Over the centuries, Switzerland and Sweden developed very different forms of military neutrality. In the Swiss case, according to former president and foreign minister Ignazio Cassis, neutrality was based on the Hague Principles, which include “no participation in wars; international cooperation but no membership in any military alliance; no provision of troops or weapons to warring parties and no granting of transition rights.”

This comprehensive approach to neutrality kept Switzerland not only out of military alliances but also outside international organizations. Switzerland only joined the United Nations in 2002, and only by referendum. Switzerland is still not a member of the European Union.

Where the Swiss approach is sometimes called “integral,” Sweden’s version of neutrality involves what’s termed the “differential approach.” Sweden might foreswear wars, but it had a very active foreign policy. Sweden was a founding member of the United Nations in 1946 and joined the European Union in 1994, after a vote of the people.

Third: Geography. Look at any map, and you’ll see few reasons to confuse my two home countries.

Switzerland occupies a tiny landlocked area of approximately 41,000 square kilometers in the heart of continental Europe. This is bigger than Maryland but smaller than West Virginia. It is encircled by friendly democracies, of which all but one—the micro-state of Liechtenstein—belongs to the European Union.

Sweden has more territory to defend, and less friendly neighbors—specifically, Russia. Located in the far north of Europe, the country expands over an area of more than 450,000 square kilometers, making it slightly larger than California. It shares a maritime border, the Baltic Sea, with Russia, which maintains large military bases in Baltiysk (in the exclave of Kaliningrad) and outside St. Petersburg. In addition, the main Swedish island of Gotland is surrounded by international waters that are used by Russian military vehicles.

All these factors have given the two countries different tipping points on neutrality.

After Russia’s full-scale attack against its neighbor Ukraine on February 22, 2022, then-Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson initially rejected calls for a change to its neutral position.

“If Sweden were to choose to send in an application to join NATO in the current situation, it would further destabilize this area of Europe and increase tensions,” she told me and other reporters on March 8, 2022.

But just a few weeks later, her declaration was replaced by the announcement—in a historic press briefing held together with then-Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin—that both Nordic countries would apply for full NATO membership at the same time.

(That the formerly neutral Finland was accepted much earlier to NATO than Sweden is a story for another time, also based on history, practice, and geography).

As Sweden applied to NATO, and as Switzerland continued on its neutrality track, I started feeling new tension between my countries. On television, Swedish commentator Edward af Sillén expressed profound annoyance at the Swiss decision to make the anti-war song “Watergun” its official 2023 entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.  Then in late 2023, the Swedish tourist board started a global campaign intended to make the world understand that Sweden is not Switzerland.  Of course, with Sweden having joined NATO in March, any confusion about which of my two home countries is which should be over. At least for the time being.

The post Why Sweden Stopped Pretending to Be Switzerland appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It’s older than Montesquieu, the famous 18th-century French nobleman and philosopher, who argued that elected representatives “should be accountable to those that have commissioned them.” The recall also pre-dates Montesquieu’s contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who in The Social Contract wrote, “the holders of executive office are not the people’s masters but its officers [and] the people can appoint them and dismiss them as it pleases.”

Indeed, the recall first appeared in the Roman Republic where, in 133 BC, the tribune Octavius—according to Plutarch’s account—was recalled after he had vetoed a senate Bill. In the Middle Ages, the prominent philosopher Marsilius of Padua (1275–1342) acknowledged the citizens’ right to “remove rulers from office who betrayed their trust.” And, a few hundred years later, the radical Levellers of 17th-century England espoused the device; some even believed members of the House of Commons should be subject to revocation, mentioning the power of “removing and calling to account magistrates” in the 1647 Agreement of the People. (This recall never went into effect, however.)

When America seceded from Britain, in 1776, the idea of the recall—perhaps inspired by Montesquieu—found its way into the U.S. Constitution’s precursor, the Articles of Confederation. These provided for the “recall and replacement of delegates even within their one- year term.” The mechanism was even included in James Madison’s first draft of the U.S. Constitution. The so-called Virginia Plan stated unequivocally that “members of the National Legislature” should be “subject to recall.” When this draft was rejected, the lack of a recall provision in the U.S. Constitution was one of the main objections raised by the anti-Federalists. “Brutus”, the pseudonym used by one leading opponent of the document, wrote: “It seems an evident dictate of reason, that when a person authorises another to do a piece of business for him, he should retain the power to replace him.”

Likewise, in the heated debates in the New York ratifying convention, New York delegate Melancton Smith—believed to be Brutus’ alter ego—again defended the recall, noting that it would be used sparingly. “The power of the recall would not be exercised as often as it ought. It is highly improbable that a man, in whom the state has confided, and who has an established influence, will be recalled, unless his conduct has been notoriously wicked,” said Smith. Despite these arguments, his proposal for a recall was rejected as too radical.

Discussions about the recall were not revived until after the American Civil War. In the 1880s, as a result of what was perceived as the corruption of the political system, so-called Populists championed the use of referendums, initiatives, direct elections of senators, primary elections, and the recall. The movement in favor of these reforms had a distinct left-wing tenor, with Social Labor parties joining the Populists.

In Europe, the recall was associated not just with left-wingers, but with revolutionaries: Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci were both advocates. Karl Marx made a case for recalling elected representatives in his pamphlet The Civil War in France. Marx wrote approvingly about the system under which all the elected representatives’ mandates were “at all times revocable” Inspired by Marx, Vladimir Lenin made a case for a “fuller democracy” in which all officials should be “fully elective and subject to recall.” This was the only way of overcoming the problem of parliamentarianism, namely “deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent people in parliament.”

That the recall was a central plank, perhaps even the lynchpin, of Lenin’s theory of representation is also evidenced by a short essay he wrote weeks after the Revolution. “Democratic representation exists and is accepted under all parliamentary systems, but this right of representation is curtailed by the fact that the people have the right to cast their votes once in every two years, and while it often turns out that their votes have installed those who oppress them, they are deprived of the democratic right to put a stop to that by removing these men,” he wrote.

Lenin cited “cantons in Switzerland and some states of America” as places where “this democratic right of recall has survived.” But, perhaps more interestingly, he also suggested that the recall could have made the revolution less violent and that the right of recall held out the prospect of a peaceful means of resolving political problems. Rather than “a rather stormy revolution”—his description of the storming of the Winter Palace—there could have been a peaceful change of power. “If we had had the right of recall,” he reflected, “a simple vote would have sufficed” to remove the provisional government.

In practical politics, the recall remained part of the formal institutions in the Soviet Union, but it was not used before the last decade of communist rule, when the citizens were allowed to use the provisions during the Glasnost period under Mikhail Gorbachev, when two deputies were recalled in Sverdlovsk.

The attempts to introduce the recall into practical politics in Europe mostly failed. True, several German cities and nine states adopted the recall during the years of the Weimar Republic (often at the instigation of moderate socialist politicians). But the provision was of little practical importance.

The recall would gain far more acceptance in the United States, where Americans saw the recall less through the words of European revolutionaries, and more through the special Swiss experience with the recall and other forms of direct democracy.

The American Labor leader J.W. Sullivan’s influential 1892 book, Direct Legislation by the Citizenship, was explicitly based on the author’s impressions from a trip to Switzerland, and he wrote enthusiastically about how “the people may recall their servants at brief intervals.”

Sullivan—like other Americans advocating the use of the recall—argued not for Marxist revolution but for establishing more efficient checks and balances. As William B. Munro, another American populist, suggested, “the chief argument in favour of the recall as advanced by friends of this expedient, is its efficacy as an agent of unremitting popular control over men in public office.”

In a creative analogy later cited in court cases supportive of the recall, Munro found that the tool was an application of the principle of ministerial responsibility, which is a feature of the English government, and which enables the course of public policy to be altered at any moment by the recall of the Cabinet at the hands of the House of Commons.

But America’s established politicians were severely critical of the recall. President William Taft, one of its strongest critics, made a point of vetoing the proposed constitution for Arizona in 1911 (the year before the territory became the 48th state) because of the document’s recall provision. Arizona responded by removing the recall from the draft—and immediately reinstating it once statehood had been granted.

It is a measure of the importance attached to—and the dangers associated with—the recall that Taft continued his crusade against the device after he left the White House. In a series of lectures at Yale University, the former president criticized the recall, which —in his view—would create a “nervous condition of resolution as to whether he [the representative] should do what he thinks he ought to do in the interest of the public.”

Of course, this potential for keeping politicians in check, for preventing legislative activism, was the chief reason behind the Populists’ espousal of the device. “The recall,” noted Pulitzer Prize winner William A. White, the editor of Emporia Gazette and a defender of populist causes, “should make … statesmen nervous.”

In America, the supporters of the recall won the day, and it was implemented in many states at the instigation of politicians and advocates on the left.

Proponents as well as opponents of the recall had expected that the device would be used predominately against judges. This turned out not to be the case. Between 1910 and 1940 only two judges—both of whom had given lenient sentences to rapists—were recalled. It is noteworthy that the California Bar Association was sufficiently concerned about the damage the judges were doing to the legal profession to support the recall.

But overall, the recall is used sparingly at the state level; North Dakota’s governor Lynn Frazier was recalled in 1921, and California’s Gray Davis in 2003.

Newsom, if removed from office, would be just the third recalled governor, in more than a century of the recall’s use in America.

The post Sack Octavius and Newsom! The Recall Is as Old as the Roman Republic appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.