Federalism and Swiss police reforms

The Swiss police system is a specimen particularly interesting to be studied in policing. It reflects an extremely complex federalist structure, resulting from historical tensions of different types between small states. The police system consists of autonomous entities of different sizes which have the duty to assist each other in a multi-level governance system. Vertical and especially horizontal cooperation and coordination mechanisms are numerous making the system difficulty readable, where responsibilities are scattered, and sometimes absurd, when it comes to obvious dysfunctions. At the same time, it evolves and adapts, mainly through bottom-up learning processes that bring out innovative and particularly appropriate solutions to deal with today’s uncertain and complex environment. It also acts as a regulator, when it comes to the development of too ambitious and intractable centralization projects that frequently lead to major failures. An expression of a typical learning mechanism that underlies police reforms in Switzerland is presented as a synthesis