Economic Cooperation at the Crossroads of France, Germany, and Italy: Collective Skill Formation in Switzerland

Among the five major systems of collective skill formation (Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) – internationally renowned especially for their dual apprenticeship training – it can be argued that the Swiss one displays the greatest regional variation relative to its size. Not only do the Swiss cantons enjoy significant autonomy in skill formation, but they are also further 'separated' into three major, linguistically defined, cultural regions, namely the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. These three regions can each be said to form a 'bounded community' – which, as this paper demonstrates, also applies to relevant specificities of their educational institutions and related governance patterns. The comparative institutional analysis shows that the way education and training is organized and governed in these regions is historically influenced by the proximity to and cross-border activities with the geographically larger European nation states between which Switzerland is located, namely Germany, France, and Italy. This influence ranges from the diffusion of ideas, norms, and practices to intensive cross-border economic cooperation, commuting, and migration. The paper thus offers a novel perspective on decentralized cooperation and regional variation in Switzerland's political economy and, in doing so, also discusses the strong national focus of large parts of the contemporary comparative capitalism and skill formation literature.