Editing Politics of Switzerland (section)

===Executive branch===
{{Main|Federal Council (Switzerland)|Federal administration of Switzerland}}

{{See also|List of members of the Swiss Federal Council|List of presidents of the Swiss Confederation}}
[[File:Karin Keller-Sutter (2024, cropped).jpg|left|thumb|224x224px|[[Karin Keller-Sutter]]
has served as [[President of the Swiss Confederation]] since 1 January 2025.]]
The [[Federal Council (Switzerland)|Swiss Federal Council]] is a seven-member executive council that heads the [[Federal administration of Switzerland|federal administration]], operating as a combination [[Cabinet (government)|cabinet]] and [[President (government title)|collective presidency]]. Any Swiss citizen eligible to be a member of the [[National Council (Switzerland)|National Council]] can be elected;<ref>[[Swiss Federal Constitution]], art. 175 al. 3</ref> candidates do not have to register for the election, or to actually be members of the National Council. The Federal Council is elected by the [[Federal Assembly (Switzerland)|Federal Assembly]] for a four-year term. Present members are:<!--sort by seniority--> [[Guy Parmelin]] (SVP/UDC), [[Ignazio Cassis]] (FDP/PLR), [[Karin Keller-Sutter]] (FDP/PLR), [[Albert Rösti]] (SVP/UDC), [[Élisabeth Baume-Schneider]] (SP/PS), [[Beat Jans]] (SP/PS), and [[Martin Pfister]] (DM/LC).

The largely ceremonial [[President of the Swiss Confederation|President]] and Vice President of the Confederation are elected by the Federal Assembly from among the members of the Federal Council for one-year terms that run concurrently. The President has almost no powers over and above his or her six colleagues, but undertakes representative functions generally performed by a president or prime minister in single-executive systems. The current President and Vice President are, as of 2025, [[Karin Keller-Sutter]] and [[Guy Parmelin]], respectively.

The Swiss executive is one of the most stable governments worldwide. Since 1848, it has never been renewed entirely simultaneously, providing a long-term continuity. From 1959 to 2003 the Federal Council was composed of a coalition of all major parties in the same ratio: two each from the (now-defunct) [[Free Democratic Party of Switzerland|Free Democratic Party]], [[Social Democratic Party of Switzerland|Social Democratic Party]] and (now-defunct) [[Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland|Christian Democratic People's Party]] and one from the [[Swiss People's Party]]. Changes in the Federal Council typically only occur in the event that one of the members resigns (only four incumbent members have been voted out of the office in over 150 years);{{sfn|Cormon|2014|p=32}} this member is almost always replaced by someone from the same party (and often also from the same linguistic group).

The Federal Chancellor is the head of the [[Federal Chancellery of Switzerland]], which acts as the general staff of the Federal Council. The Chancellery is divided into three distinct sectors. The Chancellor, currently [[Viktor Rossi]], is the formal head of the Federal Chancellor Sector, comprising the planning and strategy section, the Internal Services section, the political rights section, the federal crisis management training unit of the Federal Administration and the Records and Process Management section.

Two sectors are headed by the [[Vice-Chancellor of Switzerland|Vice-Chancellors]]: the Federal Council sector headed by [[Jörg De Bernardi]] manages the agenda of the Federal Council's meeting. This sector comprises the Section for Federal Council Affairs, the Legal Section, the Official Publications Centre, and the Central Language Services. The Information and Communications Sector is led ''ad interim'' by Ursula Eggenberger, following Vice-Chancellor [[André Simonazzi]]'s death in May 2024; this role also has expanded to become the official spokesman for the Federal Council in 2000. This sector includes the e-Government Section, the Communication Support Section and the Political Forum of the Confederation.

The federal government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each with a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of electorate and representation in the federal parliament. The classic distribution of 2 CVP/PDC, 2 SP/PS, 2 FDP/PRD and 1 SVP/UDC as it stood from 1959 to 2003 was known as the "[[Magic formula (Swiss politics)|magic formula]]".{{sfn|Cormon|2014|p=32}}

This "magic formula" has been repeatedly criticised: in the 1960s, for excluding leftist opposition parties; in the 1980s, for excluding the emerging Green Party; and particularly after the [[1999 Swiss federal election|1999 election]], by the Swiss People's Party, which had by then grown from being the fourth-largest party in the National Council to being the largest. In the [[2003 Swiss federal election|2003 federal election]], the Swiss People's Party received (effective 1 January 2004) a second seat in the Federal Council, reducing the share of the Christian Democratic Party to one seat.