Eric Kaufmann: belief

Transcript context

…Is this all an accident, or was it political engineering? How did the Swiss end up having such a strong and effective national identity? A number of things. First of all, the line between Catholicism and Protestantism cut across the German-French line in terms of language, so that cross-cutting cleavage, I think, helped. If the language and the religion were aligned, as in, say, Quebec versus the rest of Canada, then you would have had much stronger pressures towards a breakup. The other thing is a relatively successful society economically. I think that helps, although that is more recent. But the main thing is the fact that, at a time when religion was the most important thing, Geneva was Protestant and also other parts of German-speaking Switzerland were Protestant, whereas the central Swiss cantons were Catholic. But yet that held together because of that cross-cutting cleavage. Why is Switzerland now so much richer than the rest of Europe? It’s a marked difference, right?…

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