Landesring der Unabhängigen
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Alliance of Independents
Landesring der Unabhängige Alliance des Indépendants Anello degli Indipendenti |
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|---|---|
| Founder | Gottlieb Duttweiler |
| Founded | 30 December 1936 |
| Dissolved | 4 December 1999 |
| Ideology | Social liberalism |
The Alliance of Independents,Ring of Independents, or National Ring of Independents, (German: Landesring der Unabhängigen (LdU), French: Alliance des Indépendants (AdI), Italian: Anello degli Indipendenti) was a social liberalpolitical party in Switzerland that existed between 1936 and 1999.
Gottlieb Duttweiler – the founder of Migros, a retail business and consumer cooperative – was dissatisfied with the state of Swiss politics in the 1930s and therefore founded the Alliance of Independents with a group of like-minded people as an association. According to its statutes, it was not meant to be a political party at first but to be an association to help to reconcile capitalists and workers. From the beginning, the LdU also served the interests of the Migros cooperative, successfully lobbying against legislation that impeded its business model by restricting networks of general stores or sales by trucks (one of Migros' marketing strategies). The political scientist D.L. Seiler has therefore called it "a commercial enterprise continued by other means". The party won seven seats in the elections for the National Council of Switzerland in 1935 (although the seats were won in only 3 cantons of 26: 5 in Zürich, 1 each in St. Gallen and Bern). Since the original plan, to unite the best politicians of all parties in one group, did not work, the Alliance of Independents was transformed into a political party on December 30, 1936.
Duttweiler's authoritarian style of leadership combined with his vague political positions lead to a breakaway of leading figures from the party in 1943. These ran as Unabhängig-freie Liste (Eng: Independent- Free List) and won one seat in the elections for the National Council of Switzerland the following autumn. However this breakaway did not manage to exist for long. During the era of Duttweiler the party always won around 5% of the vote. However the party was never successful in the French or Italian speaking regions of Switzerland and in central Switzerland (except in Lucerne).
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