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Contribution short abstract:

This paper follows the threads of a long-forgotten tombstone dedicated to a municipality that seized to exist after a municipal merger in central Switzerland. In so doing, it hopes to show how 'the region' becomes a contested arena for local politics evading traditional left-right categorizations.

Contribution long abstract:

This research focuses on municipal mergers in central Switzerland and their effect on local communities and self-conceptions. It argues that the ongoing success of the New Right in Switzerland can only be understood in tandem with governmental reforms in the spirit of New Public Management. In the canton of Lucerne, where this research was conducted, municipal mergers are the result of a large-scale reform package, designed to give the canton better odds in the geo-economic competition within Switzerland, but also vis á vis global pressures. Regions are restructured and strategically de-institutionalized, as 'inefficient' municipalities are dissolved into larger units.

As these measures are met with local resistance, different epistemic vocabularies emerge and compete in the affected communities, as people try to make sense of their new 'place' in the world: As their home region changes, its inhabitants must, too. These initial negotiations cannot be mapped cleanly onto preconceived left-right dichotomies. It is precisely in this space where the SVP - a prototype of the European 'New Right' - has established itself as the only party opposing such mergers. Their preferred idiom mirrors arguments and narratives deployed by the SVP on macro-issues, like the relationship between Switzerland and the EU.

The 'region' in my research thus becomes an early site of contestation between different epistemic constructions of Switzerland. Tracing the story of an old tombstone, I show how people forget and remember in order to realign themselves with new ways of 'being from this region'.