Interregional and international variation of electoral decision making. Electoral behaviour in Swiss cantons in Western European comparison

Swiss cantonal party systems differ greatly. Using the same national label, cantonal parties pursue different goals and strategies. On these reasons - some authors argue - individual electoral behaviour with regard to a particular political party Varies between Cantons (states). Hence there are hardly national elections in Switzerland. Rather in the 26 states parallel elections take place at the same time. I demonstrate that in fact differences between cantonal electoral. behaviour are large. However, based on an international comparison, it is overdone to argue that there are no national Swiss election. Rather Switzerland belongs to a larger group of Western European countries, in which the interregional differences in electoral behaviour are nearly as great or even greater as between the 14 European nations under study.