Projects
SNSF Projects
Bypassing the Nation State? How Swiss Cantonal Parliaments Deal with International Obligations
2019 - 2023 (48 mois)
Applicant : Martino Maggetti, Evelyne Schmid
Other partners : Jonathan Miaz, Constance Kaempfer, Matthieu Niederhauser
Today, international law frequently requires legislation by domestic parliaments. Yet, a thorny problem that international law continues to face is precisely its limited ability to influence the behaviour of domestic legislators and the 'relative impermeability of national systems to international legal imperatives' (Cassese 2012, 188). Moreover, the expansion of international law and its shift away from regulating interstate relations towards a complex system of governance virtually concerning all societal domains has sparked opposition. Starting with the premise that 'the future of international law is domestic' (Slaughter and Burke-White, 2006), we claim that the challenges at the intersection of international obligations and domestic legal realities are particularly acute with respect to parliamentary processes located at the subnational level. Domestic legislatures, let alone subnational parliaments, have, however, been largely overlooked so far both internationally and in Switzerland and existing research has predominantly focused on courts rather than on domestic legislative actors. Although the literature recognises the importance of national and subnational legislative actors for the effectiveness of international law, when and how cantonal legislatures engage with international obligations has not yet been systematically studied.To fill this gap, we are building a research team of legal and political science researchers to answer two tightly connected questions. First, we want to find out through which formal and informal mechanisms cantonal parliaments and other actors involved in cantonal legislative processes engage with international obligations that require them to legislate and that are contained in two sets of international treaties: i) selected obligations related to the protection of human rights of particularly vulnerable individuals (such as Travellers, persons with disabilities, or undocumented minors) and ii) selected obligations from the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU.
