Digital Transformation and Local Autonomy: Implications for Swiss Municipalities

Context

Switzerland is a federal state of 26 cantons and over 2,100 municipalities, built on strong local self-determination. Municipalities enjoy one of the highest degrees of local autonomy in Europe. At the same time, expectations for digital public services are rising, and municipalities generally operate with limited personnel and financial resources. Digital transformation is emerging as a main development for public administrations across the world and it poses particular challenges for federal countries, where coordination across levels of government is essential to make digital services work.

Objective

The thesis asks how the digital transformation of public administrations impacts the local autonomy of Swiss municipalities, as perceived by the key actors involved. Five sub-questions structure the answer: how actors understand digital transformation and its opportunities and risks; how resource constraints shape their action; how municipalities are involved in cantonal and federal digital governance; how their decision-making changes; and how the development is expected to continue.

Method

The empirical part is based on 11 semi-structured expert interviews conducted between April and May 2026 with representatives of five municipal associations, four cantonal institutions and two private-sector organisations. Analysis followed the qualitative content analysis method with a combination of deductive and inductive coding.

Results

Digital transformation does not simply erode or reinforce local autonomy but reshapes the conditions under which it is exercised. Four main findings underpin this.

• First, task responsibilities across federal levels are largely unchanged. The one exception, Uri, is attributed by the interviewees themselves to the small size of the canton rather than to digital transformation as a general logic.
• Second, a distinction between political and administrative autonomy runs through the interview material. Political autonomy, i.e. the right to set local policies, fees, priorities, etc., is described as remaining intact. Administrative or operational autonomy, i.e. the room for manoeuvre on how services are delivered, is narrowed by cantonal standards and joint platforms.
• Third, municipalities broadly accept this trade-off between a certain loss of administrative/operational autonomy and the capacity to deliver digital services, as it does not touch political autonomy; the digital projects serve citizens; and for smaller municipalities, cooperation is often the only realistic path to digital service delivery.
• Fourth, personnel constraints, opposed to financial ones, are found to be the binding limitation. The funds exist but they are not politically prioritised for digital transformation, because towards citizens the investment is largely invisible compared to physical infrastructure.