The democratic movement in Switzerland.

The democratization movement in Switzerland and the development of structures of direct democracy can be traced to four different origins: the regional assembly democracies, the city-state republics, the French Revolution and the Helvetian Republic established under its influence, and the popular notions of "freedom and equality" which, during the upheavals of 1798, merged with more traditional concepts. The intellectual roots of the democratization movement in Switzerland extend back to the Old Regime but were also of great importance in the nineteenth century. They significantly enriched the representative structures emerging out of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 with elements of direct democracy such as the popular initiative and the referendum, adopted on the cantonal level between 1860 and 1870, and then on the federal level as part of the comprehensive constitutional revision of 1874. The diverse popular movements of the nineteenth century redeployed older forms of popular participation, particularly the regional assembly model, thereby helping to achieve a breakthrough for direct democracy. The collection, "The democratization movement in Switzerland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," provides an annotated selection of sources enabling the reader to trace these historical developments. The collection consists of an introductory essay, followed by the sources in chronological order, and a bibliography. Five thematic topics are covered: (1) pre-modern forms of democracy, (2) the Helvetic and Mediation period, (3) the Regeneration period, (4) the founding of the federal state, and (5) the democratic movement of the 1860s and the complete constitutional revision which followed. This source collection makes contributions to both research on democracy generally and to comparative analyses of democratic developments within different countries.