The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (German: Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz, SP; Romansh: Partida Socialdemocrata da la Svizra), also called the Swiss Socialist Party (French: Parti socialiste suisse; Italian: Partito Socialista Svizzero, PS), is a political party in Switzerland. The SP has had two representatives on the Federal Council since 1960 and received the second-highest number of votes in the 2023 Swiss federal election.
The SP was founded on 21 October 1888 and is the second-largest of the four leading coalition political parties in Switzerland. It is the only left-leaning party with representatives on the Federal Council, positioning itself at the centre-left. The party is represented by Élisabeth Baume-Schneider and Beat Jans. As of January 2024, the SP is the second-largest political party in the Federal Assembly.
Amongst all pro-European parties in Switzerland, the SP is the largest, and unlike most other Swiss parties, the SP supports Swiss membership in the European Union. Additionally, it supports labour rights and tax incentives for companies that offer shares to employees. The party is a member of the Progressive Alliance and an associate member of the Party of European Socialists.
Before the establishment of the national SP, there were various 19th-century labour movements in Switzerland such as the Grütli Union, the Swiss Trade Union Federation and several local social democratic parties. Most of these labour parties only lasted a short time, until the foundation of the Social Democratic Party on 21 October 1888 (the Swiss Labour Day). Albert Steck of Bern composed the party's platform which emphasised democracy, rejected revolutionary aspirations, and mandated a democratic solution to the social question. The first party president was Alexander Reichel of Bern.
Two years after the party's foundation, Jakob Vogelsanger was the first Social Democrat to be elected to the National Council. In 1904, the moderate party platform was replaced at a party conference in Aarau with a Marxist program written by Otto Lang. The first-past-the-post voting system for elections to the National Council and the borders of the electorates initially prevented the party from achieving serious political power on the national level, despite growing numbers of supporters. Two popular initiatives for the introduction of a proportional voting system were rejected.
The party's historical archives are hosted today by the Swiss Social Archives, which was founded in 1906 by Paul Pflüger. At a 1912 party conference in Neuchâtel, the question of women's suffrage was debated for the first time. The SP accepted a proposal that committed the party to take any opportunity to "agitate for the introduction of women's suffrage."
Although Switzerland remained neutral in the First World War, it did not avoid the spiralling economic crisis that accompanied it. The resulting social tension was unleashed in 1918 by the labour unions and the SP who organised the 1918 Swiss general strike. The goal of the strike was a fundamental reorganisation of society. The Federal Council issued an ultimatum to the strikers and allowed the military occupation of central points. In this way the strike was ended after four days. Political action was quickly taken to conciliate the strikers with the introduction of a 48-hour working week and a popular initiative on proportional elections to the National Council in the 1918 Swiss referendums which passed on 13 October 1918. In the 1919 Swiss federal election, the SP doubled its mandate from 20 to 41 members.
With the third party platform, adopted in 1920, disagreement within the party grew ever greater. In particular the fact that the platform called for the foundation of a dictatorship of the proletariat during the transitional phase from a capitalist class-based society to a socialist commune sparked violent dispute within the party. In 1921, the party decided not to join the Communist International. The left wing of the party then split from the SP and founded the Communist Party of Switzerland. In 1926, the SP joined the Labour and Socialist International and continued to be a member of until 1940.
With increasing power in parliament, the party now also demanded membership of the government, but their candidate in 1929 was not elected to the Federal Council. On the other hand, the party managed to enter the executive at a cantonal level in 1933. Geneva was the first canton to have a socialist government, with Léon Nicole as president. In the fourth party platform, promulgated in 1935, the SP rejected the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but supporting the creation of a socialist society on "free and consensual foundations" remained the party's goal.
In the 1943 Swiss federal election, the SP achieved the greatest electoral success in its history and became the largest parliamentary group. Ernst Nobs was the first member of SP to be elected to the Federal Council. With introduction of the Old-age and survivors' insurance, a further demand dating back to the time of the Landesstreik was achieved. After the failure of an SP referendum on economic reforms in 1953, the SP member of the Federal Council, Max Weber, and the general-secretary, David Farbstein, resigned. The SP remained in opposition until the introduction of the "magic formula" in 1959, which gave it two seats on the Federal Council. Since that time the SP has been a member of the grand coalition which governs Switzerland. In 1959, the fifth party platform was also agreed in which the party committed itself to social democracy and democratic socialism.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the SP gained new followers from the new social movements that arose from the protests of 1968, but lost part of their traditional voter base in the working class. This change led to fierce internal disputes and led to a decline in electoral success. After serious losses in the 1987 Swiss federal election, the SP was only the third-largest party in the National Council. This resulted in the foundation of a breakaway Democratic-Social Party, which was not a success.
The sixth party platform was promulgated in 1982. This presented the party as a modern people's party that supported democratic socialism and had social justice as its highest goal. In 1983, the SP nominated Lilian Uchtenhagen as their candidate for the Federal Council, the first time that a woman had been a candidate. The parliamentary majority elected Otto Stich instead. Part of the party demanded that the SP withdraw from the governing coalition as a result of this, but this was rejected by a party conference. Ten years later in March 1993, Ruth Dreifuss was elected as the first SD woman to serve in the Federal Council. On that occasion too, the United Federal Assembly did not choose the official candidate of the SP (Christiane Brunner), but the unofficial candidate Dreifuss (the Brunner-Effekt).
In 1990, the SP party conference accepted Switzerland's accession to the International Monetary Fund with clear conditions and elected the Valais canton councillor, Peter Bodenmann, as party president. At the 1992 party conference in Genf, the SP decided to support accession to the European Economic Area as a first step towards membership of the European Economic Community and endorsed a drug policy involving the decriminalisation of drug consumption, controlled sale of drugs for medicinal purposes, and eventual legalisation of drugs. The following year, the SP supported the national people's initiative "for a reasonable drug policy" which envisioned the legalisation of cannabis. The SP supported the 1994 national initiative "for the protection of the Alps" which sought a substantial shift of transport of goods through the Alps from road to rail. After Otto Stich's resignation from the Federal Council in 1995, the Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger was elected as his successor. In the 1995 Swiss federal election, the SP made a substantial recovery and was once again the largest party in the Federal Council.