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This article deals with the history of Switzerland since 1945.
Government
- See also Politics of Switzerland
From 1959, the Federal Council, elected by the parliament, is composed of members of the four major parties, the liberal Free Democrats, the Catholic Christian Democrats, the left-wing Social Democrats and the right-wing People's Party, essentially creating a system without a sizeable parliamentary opposition (see concordance system), reflecting the powerful position of an opposition in a direct democracy.
Women were granted the right to vote in the first Swiss cantons in 1959, at the federal level in 19711 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden in 1990. After suffrage at the federal level women quickly rose in political significance, with the first woman on the seven member Federal Council executive being Elisabeth Kopp who served from 1984–1989. The first female president was Ruth Dreifuss, elected in 1998 to become president during 1999. (The Swiss president is elected every year from those among the seven member high council and cannot serve two consecutive terms). The second female president is Micheline Calmy-Rey who held the 2007 Swiss high office. She is originally from the western area of the French-speaking canton Geneve. She is presently joined on the seven member cabinet/high council by two other women, Doris Leuthard, from the canton of Aargau and Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, from the canton of Graubünden.
Domestic
- See also Demographics of Switzerland.
In 1979, parts of the Canton of Berne attained independence while remaining in the Federation, thus forming the new canton of Jura.
The Demographics of Switzerland has changed in similar ways as in other states in Western Europe. Since 1945, the population of Switzerland has grown from roughly 4.5 to 7.5 million, mostly between 1945 and 1970, with a brief negative growth in the late 1970s, and a population growth hovering around 0.5% per year since the 1990s, mostly due to immigration. With a population composed of a roughly balanced combination of Roman Catholics and Protestants, together amounting to more than 95%, the population without any religious affiliation has grown to more than 10% in the 2000s, while the Muslim population grew from practically nil to some 4% over the past decades. Italians had been the largest group of resident foreigners since the 1920, but with the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, large-scale immigration of refugees has changed this picture, and residents with Balkanic origins now constitute the largest group of resident foreigners, with some 200,000 people (roughly 3% of the population).
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