It's basically just an agreement among the larger parties to share the government, which has been upheld since its inception. In German it is called 'Konkordanz'. I think that direct democracy leads to this agreement being upheld since there is a general fear of any party going into the opposition - direct democratic votes make an opposition overly powerful, in some ways more powerful than governmental powers.
In America the bipartisan system has corrupted our culture to the point that there really are only two normative agendas. In other countries, it’s still possible to have agendas that are sometimes in common, yet sometimes differ, without getting hit by either side’s cancel culture. In the US there is simply no common ground between the parties, so no reason not to join a team permanently.
> I find it hard to believe that politicians are just so honourable as to not team up to pass their agenda.
It seems to me that this turns out to be a chicken-egg, self-fulfilling prophecy: places where people do not trust government often elect corrupt(able) people—perhaps those types are the only ones available.
I think all stable systems are in some self reinforcing loop, otherwise they wouldn’t be stable. It just seems to me that Switzerland has, maybe by chance, found one with a more long term focus on improvement. I believe that shared government without term limits and direct democracy as a replacement for the opposition is key to this, and that it can and should be replicated elsewhere.
As I wrote, it's probably a power balance thing - parties in the Swiss system are actually more interested to 'bind' other parties into the government so they can't go out and do populist opposition politics as effectively. Think of it as a stable local optimum that seems to be better (by being more long term oriented) than the typical government/opposition party system.
Some times they team up, BUT if the citizens dont like what they do, both teamed up partys will loose in the next elections, so it's in the interest of every single one party to bind the voters they care for, sometimes they overlap and than they team up.
Politics is not a zero-sum game. When parties discuss with each other they have a chance of all furthering their agendas to some extent, and have all parties mostly support the compromise.
It's also the case that if a party campaigns strongly one subject and win votes with that, its ministers will tend to get the ministries that allow them to implement their ideas. So if you're tough on security you might get the police, if you're a fiscal conservative you get finances. It's more complicated than that, but the longer they stay on the bigger the chance they end up where they want.
