We analyze financial literacy in Switzerland and its relationship with various economic outcomes using novel survey data collected in 2023. We show that the overall financial literacy levels are high in Switzerland in an international comparison, with over 50 percent of the respondents correctly answering three financial literacy questions about interest, inflation, and risk diversification. However, we also find important heterogeneity within the population, e.g., women, the less educated, and Italian-speaking respondents exhibit, on average, lower financial literacy. In addition, we also present clear evidence that differences in financial literacy matter for the financial behavior and well-being. Respondents with higher financial literacy scores are better able to manage their expenses, to save money, and to deal with economic shocks.

This article introduces the concept of the inter-factor zone, defined as a bounded transitional phase that complements the traditional push and pull factor theory by incorporating the dynamics of uncertainty and the impact of contingent events in migration processes. Using the case of the political emigration of Czechoslovaks to Switzerland following the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, this study analyses how decision-making during this transitional phase was shaped by structural factors, institutional support, and unforeseen events. The inter-factor zone is empirically traced primarily in transit settings, where departure has occurred but a stable destination orientation has not yet been established. While this article primarily focuses on Switzerland, the analysis also considers Austria, particularly Vienna, as a crucial transit context where many emigrants made pivotal decisions before continuing their journeys. Based on qualitative analysis of 35 biographical narratives and historical documents, the research highlights the critical role of transit countries and humanitarian organizations in shaping migrants’ options and interpretations under conditions of suspended orientation. This study enhances our understanding of migration complexity, offers a novel perspective on the significance of this transitional phase, and provides conceptual insights for contemporary migration scholarship and policy debates concerning refugee reception and integration.

Subseasonal forecasts provide valuable guidance for decision-making but remain limited by systematic biases and coarse spatial resolution, particularly over regions with complex orography. Quantile mapping (QM) is widely used for post-processing because it enables effective bias correction and downscaling, yet it applies a distributional correction and therefore neglects the case-specific dependence between forecasts and observations. To move toward a more integrated approach, we explore a diffusion-based generative framework for simultaneous probabilistic bias correction and high-resolution downscaling, with lead time explicitly included as a conditioning variable. We employ a conditional denoising diffusion model (DM) trained on high-resolution gridded observations (2 km) and conditioned on coarse-resolution ensemble-mean subseasonal forecasts (36 km) from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) subseasonal system. We focus here on a univariate temperature model and on training strategies. By learning conditional distributions of observations given forecasts and lead time, diffusion-based generative models enable case-dependent corrections that exploit forecast–observation relationships. Two training configurations are examined to assess how lead-time conditioning and data availability influence the learning of biases. Results show that the DM recovers realistic fine-scale temperature patterns and achieves meaningful lead-time-dependent bias correction across subseasonal lead times, even when trained on relatively limited datasets. However, compared to QM, the diffusion-based forecasts exhibit lower skill in probabilistic metrics such as the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) and discrimination for extremes. Overall, this work represents a first step toward lead-time-aware subseasonal post-processing using DMs and highlights directions for future methodological development.

Opiate smuggling has found increasing scholarly attention. Legal distribution however remains largely a blind spot. Against this background, I follow in this article some of the traces it has left in Switzerland. I ask not only how it was regulated, but also where the drugs came from and how and by whom they were sold. In the first section, I examine the trade in the opium-based panacea theriac in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At that time, pharmacists were increasingly successful in claiming the exclusive right to sell remedies. When powerful industrial opiates gradually replaced the early modern artisanal goods in the nineteenth century, it was they who benefited most. As I argue in the second section, this line of business came under pressure when the use of opiates increasingly faced criticism in the last third of the century. However, as I show in the third section, legal provisions were only reluctantly enforced and followed. A fundamental shift only occurred in the 1960s when, in the context of the cold war, the Americanisation of international crime control and the “war on drugs” led to a repressive turn in law enforcement.

Law‐making is a core function of parliaments in democratic systems. Yet, we still know little about the extent to which parliaments influence legislation and the reasons why MPs modify some bills more than others. We analyse the degree of bill amendments operated by parliament, by comparing bills before and after parliamentary deliberations with a text reuse approach. We postulate that MPs attempt to overcome the problem of limited processing capacity by prioritising certain bills over others. To this end, they use considerations related to institutional rules, attention dynamics and partisan politics. Empirically, we apply zero‐inflated beta regressions on a dataset covering about 1,700 bills adopted from 1995 to 2015 in the Swiss Parliament. Moreover, we address the problem of observational equivalence affecting analyses of parliament's impact on law‐making, by taking into account the government's anticipation strategy. Results highlight a reasonably high amendment activity, but with strong variations across bills. MPs change bills more if they are subject to direct democracy, rank high on the parliamentary agenda or if they attract media attention. The influence of the electoral cycle and coalition politics is not confirmed.

Using individual data on Swiss federal ballots (VOX data) and an original dataset on the evolution and content of political campaigns, this article elucidates how negative campaigning influences individual turnout during Swiss federal ballots. It hypothesises that the effect of negativism on turnout depends on ‘which camp goes dirty’ and, specifically, on the direction of the political campaign (‘status quo’ versus ‘policy change’ campaigns). A series of multilevel models provide strong support for the hypotheses, by showing that high negativism in ‘status quo campaigns’ decreases individual turnout, whereas high negativism for ‘policy change campaigns’ increases it. It is argued here that this could depend on the emotional responses triggered by negativism in political campaigns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects across the world, yet different countries have had varying degrees of success in their attempts to manage it. One of the reasons behind the different outcomes observed so far lies in the strengths and weaknesses of different governance arrangements leveraged to tackle the crisis. In this article we examine what we can learn about the operational capacity of different democracies through their early responses to the crisis. We provide a framework of four positive qualities of multilevel governance that might lead to greater chances of positive practical outcomes and present an illustrative case study of the experiences of Switzerland and the United Kingdom (UK). We conclude with some areas for further research and investigation.

Modernization theory posits a change from traditional or “collective” forms to modern or “reflective” forms of volunteering. In a research project using a combined qualitative-quantitative approach, the motivation of 118 young Swiss adults who showed an interest in international volunteering was investigated. Qualitative analysis revealed 12 different motives which could be categorized into three different groups: A first group called “Achieving something positive for others,” a second group named “Quest for the new,” and a third group of motives labeled “Quest for oneself.” Motivations of young Swiss adults for international volunteering clearly show the characteristics of “reflexive” volunteers. Most respondents displayed a combination of motives while for only 11% of them altruism (“Achieving something positive for others”) was the one and only driving force behind their interest in international volunteering. The inductively constructed typology of motives can be a useful planning device for organizations that run or intend to set up an international volunteering program for young adults.

The dynamic nature and vast distances of exchange networks in the European Bronze Age are gradually being revealed through an increasing array of provenance studies. Here, the authors report the results of elemental and lead and copper isotope analyses of eight copper-based artefacts from a Middle to early Late Bronze Age settlement in Möriken-Wildegg (Switzerland’s Canton of Aargau). Diverse origins for the copper are identified, including the eastern and southern Alps and, potentially, Cyprus. Given their inconspicuous archaeological context, the authors argue that the objects from Möriken could suggest an influx of Cypriot copper into Central Europe around 1400 BC.

The new mineral zanelliite, ideally PbCu9[AsO3.5(OH)0.5]2(AsO4)2(OH)9(H2O)3, was discovered at the Grosses Chalttal deposit, Mürtschenalp district, Glarus, Switzerland. It occurs as aggregates of {100} platy crystals, up to 0.05 mm in size, turquoise-green in colour. Lustre is vitreous. The calculated density is 4.425 g cm–3. The empirical formula, based on 28 O atoms per formula unit, is (Pb0.90Ca0.08)Σ0.98(Cu9.00Zn0.01)Σ9.01(As3.84Mo0.17)Σ4.01O15.17(OH)9.83(H2O)3. The occurrence of H2O was confirmed through micro-Raman spectroscopy and structural analysis. Zanelliite is monoclinic, space group C2/c, with unit-cell parameters a = 39.395(7), b = 5.5563(9), c = 10.5373(17) Å, β = 95.109(6)°, V = 2297.3(7) Å3 and Z = 4. The eight strongest reflections in the observed powder X-ray diffraction pattern are [d in Å (I)]: 19.7 (100), 4.86 (74), 4.48 (31), 4.28 (40), 3.777 (42), 2.964 (82), 2.708 (74), and 2.569 (37). The crystal structure of zanelliite was refined to R1 = 0.1215 for 2077 unique reflections with F > 4σ(F) and 125 refined parameters. Two different kinds of layers can be identified, i.e. a Cu–Pb–As heteropolyhedral layer, with composition [PbCu6As4O14(OH)6(H2O)], and a Cu layer, with formula [Cu3O(OH)4(H2O)2]. The crystal structure is composed of an alternating stacking of these two types of layers in a 1:1 ratio. Zanelliite is a supergene mineral whose origin is related to the oxidation of primary Cu ores. It is associated with brochantite, chrysocolla, heimite and parnauite. A second occurrence of zanelliite was reported from the Hochmättli deposit, Mürtschenalp district, Glarus, Switzerland. Zanelliite honours the mineral collector, mathematics and geography teacher Dr. Remo Zanelli (b. 1977) for his contributions to the knowledge of the secondary minerals of the ore deposits of the Glarus Alps. The mineral, its name, and its symbol (Znl) were approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA 2024-061).

This study explores whether ideological polarization increases political engagement and trust, both of which are central elements of civic culture. Polarization can clarify political positions and thereby simplify the formation of opinions, increase the stakes of elections, and offer more options to citizens. To estimate the impact of polarization from a causal perspective, we exploit variation within individuals over time using individual-level data from the Swiss Household Panel spanning from 1999 – 2023, amounting to 178,251 observations from 28,187 persons. Ideological polarization at the individual level is measured by a process of increasing extremity of the self-position on the left-right scale. In addition, we test how polarization of cohabiting household members has spillover effects on political engagement and trust. For political engagement, we adopt a comprehensive approach, focusing on interest in politics, participation in popular votes, party identification, and frequency of political discussions as dependent variables. Political trust is measured as confidence in the federal council. To analyze the data, we primarily use fixed effects models, complemented by a pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model, and cross-lagged models to address reverse causality. Results show that ideological polarization does promote engagement but has a weak negative impact on political trust. This effect remains significant when controlling for affective polarization. Additionally, there is an overall increase in political engagement and a decrease in political trust if partners living in the same household become more extreme in their ideological preferences.

What do different ways of seeing the world mean for actors engaged in peacemaking? Through the case of Cameroon, I illustrate the critical yet often-overlooked role of one’s conceptions of self in the world – how actors see the world and their positions within it – in shaping peace processes. Considering the growing debate over the conceptualisation of the world order as anarchic or hierarchical and foregrounding Cameroonian articulations, I examine how notions of hierarchy and hypocrisy are constitutive of the conflict actors’ perceptions of the world and condition their engagements in foreign-led mediation concerning the Anglophone Crisis. Drawing on over 60 interviews, including those with Cameroonian ruling party members, opposition politicians, and individuals leading the armed separatist movement, I explain how considerations of self-image and status are powerful drivers of behaviours and not aspects that can be dismissed as ‘irrational’ or ‘overly sensitive’; rather, various Cameroonian actors deploy themes of hierarchy and hypocrisy in highly rational and intentional ways to further their aspirations. Inspired by Historical International Relations and reverse ethnography, the article challenges the presentist bias in much of today’s analysis of global politics and offers a historically conscious explanation of conflict parties’ behaviour in mediation.