Federalism in Numbers: Federal Government, Cantons, and Municipalities

Anyone moving from Bern to Zurich learns a new word for a familiar thing. In Bern the city council is the parliament: 80 members who debate, submit motions and approve the budget. In Zurich the city council is the government: nine members, each heading a department. The parliament in Zurich is called the municipal council. In Bern that name refers to the government.

This is not a coincidence, but a result of how Switzerland is built. The federal, cantonal and municipal levels each organize themselves, and each level has its own bodies, sizes and names. This text misses the system we vote on: how many people hold an office, how it varies from canton to canton and municipality to municipality, and why the same word can mean the opposite in two places.

253 people make up federal politics, about 100,000 make up politics

When Swiss politics is discussed, it usually refers to Bern: 200 National Council members, 46 Council of States members, seven Federal Councilors. So it is set by the Federal Constitution in articles 149, 150 and 175. That amounts to 253 people.

Below that are 26 cantons with 26 parliaments and 26 governments. The cantonal parliaments together have 2,594 seats, the cantonal governments 154 members. And below that are 2,110 municipalities, each with its own executive and many committees, for example for school, construction, finance or naturalization.

Sources: Federal Constitution; Cantons: seat numbers of the 26 cantons, own addition; Municipalities: BFS, Official Municipal Register, as of 25.09.2026; municipal executives: National Municipal Monitoring 2023; municipal parliaments: Michael Strebel, as of 6.4.2025, extrapolated with an average of 37 seats.

The Swiss Municipal Association estimates that about 100,000 persons are engaged in a political office, in an executive, a parliament or a committee. The federal and cantonal levels together have just over 3,000 seats. About 97 percent of Switzerland's political offices are therefore at the municipal level.

Those who take on an office usually do so alongside their profession. According to the National Municipal Monitoring a member of a municipal executive works on average about ten hours per week for their office, a municipal president about twenty. Executive members are on average 54 years old, about a quarter are women, and 48 percent are unaffiliated with any party. Almost every second municipality struggles to find enough candidates for its executive.

Bern has 334 municipalities, Glarus has three

How a canton is structured is decided by the canton itself. The canton of Bern has, according to the BFS, 334 municipalities, Vaud 300, Aargau 196. Glarus and Basel-Stadt each have three, Appenzell Innerrhoden five.

Cantons are equally free regarding the size of their parliament. Appenzell Innerrhoden had at the end of 2025 16,890 inhabitants and a Grand Council with 50 seats. That is one seat per 338 inhabitants. In the canton of Zurich there are 1,632,918 inhabitants and 180 seats in the cantonal council, i.e. 9,072 inhabitants per seat, almost 27 times as many. In the National Council, on average 45,636 inhabitants correspond to one seat.

One level lower the size orders shift again. The Zurich municipal council, the city parliament, has 125 members and is, according to own figures, the largest municipal parliament in Switzerland. It is larger than the parliaments of 20 cantons. The smallest municipal parliament is in Russin in the canton of Geneva, with nine seats.

Four out of five municipalities operate without a parliament

In April 2025 only 451 municipalities, about one in five, had their own parliament. In the others the municipal assembly decides: anyone entitled to vote in the municipality can come one evening to the gymnasium or multipurpose room, ask questions and vote on the budget and tax rate.

The distribution largely follows the language border. Geneva and Neuchâtel require every municipality to have an elected parliament. In the Waadt each municipality with more than 1,000 inhabitants must have a Conseil communal, and this canton alone provides over a third of all municipal parliaments in Switzerland. Most municipalities in Ticino also have one. In Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden there is none, while in the canton of Schaffhausen five out of 26 have one.

Behind this are two forms of municipal democracy. In one, citizens elect a parliament that deliberates and decides. In the other, citizens decide themselves, anyone who shows up that evening. Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden also use the second form at the cantonal level: once a year the eligible voters gather outdoors for a Landsgemeinde.

The same name means the opposite in two places

Zurich and Bern are not an exception. In Geneva the municipal parliament is called the Conseil municipal, in the Bernese Jura that name refers to the executive. The Geneva executive is called the Conseil administratif, and each year on June 1 one of its members becomes Maire for a year. In Neuchâtel the Conseil communal is the government and the Conseil général is the parliament. In Waadt the Conseil communal is the parliament, the government is called the Municipalité.

Cantonal parliaments also have different names: in twelve cantons Grand Council, in nine Cantonal Council, in four Landrat. Jura simply calls its parliament Parlement. For governments it is similar. Most are called Regierungsrat, in St. Gallen and Graubünden just Regierung, in the Romandy Conseil d'État, in Ticino Consiglio di Stato and in Jura Gouvernement. Appenzell Innerrhoden has a Standeskommission, headed by the ruling Landammann. Nine other cantons also have a Landammann at the head of the government, from Uri to Aargau.

In Davos the parliament is called the Grosser Landrat and has 17 members. The government is called the Kleiner Landrat, has five members and is led by the Landammann, who elsewhere would be called the municipal president.

Names are part of political tradition, and changes are controversial. The Aargau government council proposed replacing the municipal mayor with a municipal presidency and the Landammann with a government presidency and the citizen council with a municipal parliament. The Grand Council rejected this in March 2026 by a vote of 69 to 64. The old designations remain.

How many politicians Switzerland has, no one knows exactly

Some numbers in this text are exact to the day, others are only estimates. The number of municipalities is recorded by the BFS in an official register that records every merger and cantonal change with dates. The number of seats in the National Council is stated in the constitution.

There is no such register for the municipal level. The number of municipal parliaments is counted by political scientist Michael Strebel, who maintains his own overview. The number of executive seats comes from a survey conducted every five to six years. And the 100,000 militia positions are an estimate by the municipal association. The numbers also change continuously because municipalities merge and committees disappear: In ten years, the number of executive seats in the municipalities has decreased by about 2,000 according to the municipal monitoring.

Switzerland knows exactly to the day how many municipalities it has. How many people it governs, it only knows approximately.

Oliver Herren is co-founder of Plural, Digitec Galaxus and True Wealth. He writes his personal opinion here, not that of Plural.