Swiss transport policy for Europe: Federalism and the dominance of local issues

This paper argues that as a function of the federalist structure of Switzerland, policy projects are treated as if they were local public goods. In case of transport policy proposals with important spatial externalities, this may prove to be fatal for the integration of Swiss transport infrastructure into the European transport networks. Empirical evidence for the relevance of local issues is given in this paper for five votes on road-transport issues with a European impact in Switzerland in 1984 and 1990. It is concluded that European transport infrastructure networks risk to be incomplete if federalist elements in national decision-making lead to a dominance of local issues.