In this report of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF Report No. 54, 2000), Bruno Schoch asks whether Switzerland can serve as a model for solving nationality conflicts. He traces how the Swiss Confederation became a four-language state after 1798, and why linguistic strife and ethnic hatred never took hold there, despite the age of nationalism and two world wars.
His central point is that Switzerland is founded on sovereign cantons, not on nationalities: the cantons are not ethnic units, and the country's stability rests on its long history, direct democracy and political culture. Schoch concludes that Switzerland cannot simply be copied – as proposed for Cyprus or Bosnia – but remains a very useful object of study for any multilingual or multi-ethnic country.