bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Structural Shifts in Switzerland’s Economy and Society, 2000–2020
Authors: Oesch Daniel 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter discusses the changes in Switzerland’s economy and society between 2000 and 2020, two decades marked by growth: Switzerland’s economy expanded almost without interruption, employment increased to an extent not seen since the 1960s, and the population rose by over a fifth. However, productivity only increased slowly and wages grew much less than in earlier boom periods. Over the same period, Switzerland’s social structure changed fundamentally. Educational attainment rose sharply as the numbers both of graduates of Swiss universities and of highly qualified immigrants increased. Tertiary education is thus becoming the new norm in Switzerland, replacing apprenticeships as the dominant level of education. Under the influence of strong immigration, Switzerland’s population has also become more diverse. Increasingly highly skilled immigration from a growing number of countries puts an end to a skewed social structure where foreigners from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the former Yugoslavia were traditionally relegated to the social hierarchy’s bottom-end. These trends have also altered Switzerland’s class structure. Strong job growth in health, education, and business services has mainly benefited professionals, managers, and technicians. Therefore, the ranks of the salaried middle class expanded, whereas the traditional working class as well as the lower middle class of clerical workers lost ground. The losers of structural change in recent decades thus have been not the middle class but the working class.
Health Policy
Authors: Trein Philipp , Rüefli Christian , Vatter Adrian 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter analyses the structures, processes, and actors of health policy in Switzerland. In international comparison, Switzerland has a very well-developed health system with universal insurance coverage and high-quality care services. The regulation, financing, and provision of health care are characterized by three features: federalism—an important role for subnational governments (cantons); liberalism—high importance for economic freedom and individual responsibility; and subsidiarity—the provision of services by the lowest level of government and non-state actors that are close to the recipients of services. Against this background, this chapter analyses the politics of Swiss health policy in three steps. Firstly, the text discusses the various actors and explains their roles for health policy-making. Secondly, the chapter provides a historical overview of health policy reforms and outlines the development of institutions and policies in this field. Thirdly, the chapter discusses political factors that impact health policy reforms in Switzerland. New national policies and large encompassing reforms for the entire country are difficult to implement, due to the strong power of interest groups and voters, and as the cantons enjoy extensive autonomy in the implementation of health policy. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges for Swiss health policy: rising costs and how to deal with them as well as the growing significance of the federal government.
Gender and Equality+ Policy
Authors: Engeli Isabelle 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Switzerland is widely known for being a laggard in granting women’s right to vote in 1971 and same-sex marriage only in 2021. Since then, Switzerland has made progress towards gender equality through the introduction of the principle of gender equality in the federal constitution in 1981 and gender equality law in 1996. The chapter reviews the main opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls in the promotion of gender+ equality across education, the family, and the labour market. Pivotal steps have been taken to move the equality agenda forward under the framework of the CEDAW. Switzerland has nevertheless shied away from adopting a far-reaching agenda regarding gender+ equality. Instead, the Swiss approach is best characterized as a politics of small steps that has been punctuated by federalism and direct democracy. More recently, the influence of the far right has also left its conservative footprint on the equality+ agenda. As a result, Swiss equality policy has remained far from having achieved effective equality. Women are underrepresented in politics at all levels, the institutional family model remains predominantly heteronormative, pink ghettos persist in education and in the labour market, and pay discrimination is blatant.
Switzerland, Quo Vadis?
Authors: Freiburghaus Rahel , Mueller Sean 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter looks at the five main political trends that have engulfed Swiss politics over the past few decades: alienation, centralization, digitalization, internationalization/Europeanization, and polarization. While they all reflect debates and developments found elsewhere, each poses a particular challenge for the consensual, direct-democratic, and profoundly federal Swiss political system. The first part of the chapter traces the nature and extent of each challenge and identifies the kind of problem it poses. Based on new and original expert survey data, the second part of the chapter then looks at possible solutions and reform options for the Swiss polity, its politics, and policy-making. We conclude by sketching two separate, yet inherently linked, paths that Switzerland may follow to accommodate these challenges: 1) changing the behaviour of political actors and 2) changing the institutional framework and the incentives it provides.
The Historical and Institutional Formation of Swiss Political Culture
Authors: Herrmann Irène 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Swiss citizens are widely known to enjoy particularly extensive democratic rights. Not only can they vote and be elected to government, but they can also reject laws and even propose changes to their constitution. To the surprise of many, these exceptional rights have not led to complete disarray and have been exercised in a very moderate, if not outright conservative, way. To address both these considerations, this chapter focuses first on the nineteenth century, when these rights were most fully exercised just as responsibility increased, mostly based on the idea that the Swiss had to be worthy of their glorious ancestors. It then tackles the twentieth century, when the same empowerment restricted the expansion of the groups of people who had access to it. This in turn posed problems in terms of the integration of swathes of the population who were supposedly naturally less reasonable or who were unable to become so since they did not share the same illustrious history. Ultimately, both these rights and the sense of individual moderation they presupposed were characteristic of a very weak state that had to delegate to its citizens the portion of responsibility that it could not assume for them. This mechanism, inspired by poverty, was internalized just as Switzerland was becoming prosperous. However, the Swiss understood this new wealth to be the outcome of their reasonableness. Consequently, they tended to accentuate their self-restraint as well as their reluctance to share their political rights.
Federalism
Authors: Vatter Adrian 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter deals with Swiss federalism and focuses on the institutions of Swiss federalism. The chapter first presents the foundations and basic principles of the Swiss federal state. The implementation of the main federalist principles, such as partial autonomy, or cantonal participation and collaboration at the federal level, depends on certain institutional arrangements. Accordingly, the contribution presents vertical institutions of Swiss federalism such as the upper house of parliament (the Council of States), the cantonal vote on constitutional amendments (the need for majority support from the cantons), the cantonal initiative, and the cantonal referendum as well as the most important aspects of horizontal cooperative federalism such as intercantonal treaties and conferences. The chapter concludes with an overview of the main future challenges for Swiss federalism.
Judicial Tenure and Retirements
Authors: Pérez-Liñán Aníbal , Castagnola Andrea 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Judicial tenure is often perceived as the most important institutional protection for judicial independence because it can promote the impartiality of court rulings. This chapter analyses different tenure models and their ability to protect judges effectively. Although life tenure is considered the gold standard to protect judges, and therefore embraced by a large number of constitutions worldwide, this arrangement is not free from problems. The first part of the chapter analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the life tenure system along with its two most frequent alternatives: judicial appointments with a mandatory retirement age, and appointments for a fixed term. The most common problems identified with life tenure are the ageing of judges on the bench, strategic retirements, and the potential disconnection of judges from society. Long, fixed terms without reappointment appear to be a better arrangement for promoting judicial independence. However, because formal tenure protections are not respected in many parts of the world, in the second part of the chapter we analyse how political actors disrupt judicial tenure. The authors create a novel typology that identifies four types of judicial exits: natural exits, strategic retirements, formal removals, and induced departures. The chapter offers illustrations for these patterns around the world, paying special attention to formal removals and induced departures. These examples underscore that chief executives are the most common actors threatening judges—but not the only ones—and that politicians employ formal removal procedures, as well as informal pressures, to purge the courts.
Mining Frontiers and the Making of the Modern World
Authors: Marques Leonardo 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Mining—extraction of mineral resources from earth—has been central to various historical transformations since prehistoric times. The characteristics and broader meanings of mining, however, have changed over time and space. Taking labour, technology, and environmental change as its guiding theme, this chapter explores the historiography of mining, with a focus on mineral frontiers in the Iberian Americas. New Spain, New Granada, Peru, and Brazil were the main sources of the bullion that contributed to the creation of a world economy in the early-modern era. At the other end of the global flows of silver and gold were the thousands of Amerindians and Africans who spent most of their lives in the mines and rivers of colonial Latin America, working under various labour arrangements and radically reshaping the environment in places like Potosí, Zacatecas, and Minas Gerais. This is illustrated by a case study of gold mining in Brazil.
Towards a Technological History of Commodity Production
Authors: Pretel David 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter explores the technological history of export commodities, especially as it pertains to the processes of extraction and processing in the Global South. General historiographic reflections are combined with detailed historical examples spanning the past six centuries. The objective is to appraise the impact of technology in commodity cycles using a variety of case studies, in particular the production of sugar, silver, henequen, and tree products. Rather than attempting a comprehensive examination of all the technological dimensions of commodity frontiers and chains, this chapter concentrates on the significance of industrial treatment of raw materials in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; the emergence of technological interconnections among distant regions; the displacement of natural resources by artificial substitutes; the persistence of traditional production techniques; and the collaboration of local and imported expertise. Taken together, these serve as a call for a technological history of global commodity production.
Culinary Commodities
Authors: Zanoni Elizabeth 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter introduces readers to an historical and historiographical overview of food histories that has utilized a commodity-history approach to globalize research on foodways and to historicize contemporary food systems that move commodities from ‘farm to fork’. It argues that the best of this research embeds food commodities in their larger political, economic, and cultural milieu to link histories of mobile food to other historical processes such as voluntary and forced migration, empire- and nation-building, industrialization, and capitalism. This perspective, scholars have shown, reveals that the globalization of food is shaped by often inequitable political and labour regimes and geopolitical dynamics. The chapter also includes a case study of one Italian family whose entrepreneurial endeavours in South America illustrate principal historical and historiographical trends in recent food commodity scholarship.
Primary Commodities and Industrial Consumers
Authors: Robins Jonathan 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Most modern commodities serve as raw materials for industrial processes. From the eighteenth century, industrial demand drove new forms of production and the expansion of commodity production into new areas. While industries were shaped by the physical properties of commodities, commodities were also remade to suit changing industrial needs. New technologies rendered some commodities obsolete but could also give producers flexibility and resilience in the face of competition. Many commodities served multiple industries, embedded in complex ‘commodity webs’ that created opportunities as well as limits to commodity expansion. Palm oil, from an early-modern luxury, became an important ingredient in industrial manufactures like soap and candles. It was embedded in a commodity web linking multiple industries, sites of production, and other commodities. Its industrial success owed more to factors influencing its production cost than its material properties, and the emergence of a plantation system cemented palm oil’s role in global industry.
Producing Drug Histories
Authors: Madancy Joyce A. 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter explores the interdisciplinary directions pursued in recent histories of drugs, which stress the key role of socio-cultural context in determining the meanings of, attitudes towards, and policies related to the production of psychoactive substances such as opium, alcohol, caffeine, and to a lesser extent cannabis, cocaine, and tobacco. Three particular themes in recent scholarship are highlighted: the central place of psychoactive commodities in global/imperial trade and production networks; identity formation; and the politics of control. Opium is then examined in more depth in a case study analyzing the range of responses in India, Britain, and China in the final decade of the triangular trade. Differences in Indian and Chinese production methods reveal important strengths and weaknesses in the political, social, and economic structure of each society. Opium production could entail both exploitation and opportunity. The chapter ends with reflections on possible avenues for future research in drug history.
Migration, Slavery, and Commodification
Authors: Zeuske Michael 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter analyses migrations in global history using examples of slave trade/slavery as ‘forced’ or ‘coerced’ migration and their connections to commodification. Taking a longue-durée plateau approach to global history, from 10000 bnc to around 1960, Atlantic slavery (1400–1900), as well as the slaveries and colonial expansions of Europe (1800–1960), are given special consideration. In addition to referencing the commodities produced by and for enslaved people, here enslaved people in particular are treated as ‘talking commodities’, a relatively unaddressed topic. In summary, it is established that without slavery, diverse slavery regimes, slave trade, but above all without enslaved people, many commodities would not have existed. How this applies to commodification in ‘Western’ capitalism as a whole needs to be further researched and debated.
Approches Filières and Commodity Chains
Authors: Ruf François , Ollendorf Franziska , Uribe Leitz Enrique 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter juxtaposes two research strands that developed in parallel yet have remained largely disconnected from each other: francophone approches filières and anglophone commodity chains (and global value chains). Both share an interest in the analysis of global production patterns and commodity flows. Despite their commonalities, they differ in their approach. A review of cocoa literature illustrates their respective key characteristics; followed by a discussion of how each enables an understanding of the historical dynamics of cocoa in the Ivory Coast and Indonesia, as a microcosm of the global economy in relation to tropical agricultural commodities, shifting perspectives to the hidden costs (particularly environmental and ethical) of cocoa production. The chapter argues that understanding such externalities of production is key to their sustainability and demonstrates that this was integral to approches filières before finding its way into commodity and global value chain analyses.
Labour as a Commodity
Authors: Hofmeester Karin 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Recent scholarship is resulting in a reappraisal of how we should understand labour as a commodity. The chapter begins with an overview of the debate that began in the eighteenth century with Adam Smith, before being developed by Marx and Polanyi. However, this focused exclusively on wage labour. Sociologists and historians have now begun widening the scope of what should be considered ‘commodified labour’. This has found expression in the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, and its taxonomy, which explicitly places commodified labour within the wider framework of other types of labour relations—including other, often coerced forms of commodified labour. The chapter illustrates this with a case study of rough diamond production in India, Brazil, and South Africa, from the seventeenth till the early twentieth century, showing how this more inclusive definition enables a long-term global analysis of labour as a commodity.
Port Cities and Commodities
Authors: Antunes Cátia , Vos Jelmer 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter examines the role of port cities in the construction of global commodity trades in the early-modern era, using the Angolan capital Luanda as a case study. It defines port cities by their urban functions rather than demographic stock, allowing comparison of cases from Africa and the Americas with better-known Eurasian examples. Based on a reading of current urban and maritime historical literature, the chapter explains how port cities built on their hub-and-nodal functions in regional commodity trades to become gateways for global commodity chains. Concentrating on the local contexts in which port cities emerged, it argues that African port cities were more than peripheries supplying raw materials and slave labour to core regions in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Ports like Luanda connected local, regional, and global markets and thus created commodity chains that satisfied consumer demands in their hinterlands as well as overseas.
Territorial Mapping and the Formation of Frontier Zones
Authors: Joseph Sabrina 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
The mapping and surveying of lands across various regions of the world by colonial authorities, scientists, and states intensified from the eighteenth century onwards and was motivated in large part by political and economic interests. These initiatives played a key role in integrating hitherto unexploited lands within global networks of commodity production and exchange. The first part of the chapter provides an overview of the current literature on territorial mapping. The second half explores the case study of the Trucial States in the early part of the twentieth century, specifically in regard to the political and economic motivations of mapping initiatives undertaken by the British and how these efforts played a pivotal role in the emergence of the oil frontier.
Commodities, Trade, and Ecological Transformation in the Modern World
Authors: Ross Corey 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter examines the intersection of commodity history and environmental change. Focusing principally on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it considers how the boom of commodity production and trade rearranged ecological relations around the world, and how historians have sought to make sense of these transformations. The discussion revolves around three principal themes—the economics of resource depletion, the spatial teleconnections of markets, and the ecological ramifications of specialization—which together highlight how a rapidly expanding world market for goods led to an unprecedented exploitation of land, water, plants, animals, and soils. It also considers how environmental factors shaped processes of commodification, using a handful of historical case studies (in particular, gutta percha, tin, and rubber) to illustrate their interconnectedness. The chapter argues that the inclusion of the biophysical world in our narratives provides historians with a potent tool for connecting commodities to their socio-ecological origins and for evaluating their long-term costs.
Historical Archaeologies of Commodities
Authors: Mullins Paul R. 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Archaeologists examining the past half-millennium focus much of their analysis on the ways disparate people consume mass-produced commodities in distinctive forms that variously reproduce, negotiate, resist, or ignore ideology and inequality. This chapter examines the archaeological scholarship on commodities, particularly the ways consumers are structurally situated by commodities, how commodities’ meanings are constructed and contested in everyday consumption, and archaeological approaches to contextualizing these meanings. The chapter then focuses on the historical archaeology of African-American commodity consumption in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ways commodities assumed meaning in a racially segregated society, and how commodity consumption could reproduce racial inequalities as well as imply a measure of self-determination for African-American consumers. It concludes that archaeologies of commodification are distinguished by the interpretation of prosaic things that are intersection points between producers, marketers, and consumers embedded in global structural, social, and ideological processes.
Seeing Things
Authors: Arabindan-Kesson Anna 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter presents an overview of approaches to, and case studies of, the visual representation of commodities. It specifically focuses on the representation of cotton, and its associations with commerce, colonialism, and slavery. The chapter has four sections. It sketches out recent art historiographical approaches to the study of commodities and then considers the significance of materiality as an art historical methodology that engages with the implications of the physical substance of a commodity and its visual representation. The chapter then examines how the materiality of cotton was represented and used to visualize meanings about trade, its geographies of connection, and its association with slavery. Finally, it reflects on possible future directions for studies of the visual history of commodities that might expand our understanding of how visual and material objects shape the production of historical knowledge.