"In 700 years of democracy," rumbled Orson Welles in the film The Third Man, "the only thing the Swiss have invented is the cuckoo clock." This gibe was not even correct: a German in the Black Forest invented the cuckoo clock. But it barely ruffled the Swiss, who often appear to think that they, not the Greeks, invented democracy, and that only they understand its proper practice. The cardinal rule of Switzerland's unwritten democratic law is that only men shall vote. In the rest of Europe, only tiny Liechtenstein and Monaco also...
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