Among the industrialized countries, Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark had introduced universal or means-tested pension schemes before 1914. During the interwar decades, Belgium, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States followed suit. By 1935, when the Social Security Act was introduced in the United States, Switzerland was one of the only European industrialized countries without national-level pensions. Yet, old age and survivors' insurance (Alters- und Hinterlassenenversicherung, AHV) constituted a very contentious item on the Swiss postwar political agenda. After a decade of political debate, the law introducing federal pensions was challenged by a referendum and defeated in 1931. The demise of the Lex Schulthess – named after its Radical architect, Federal Councilor Edmund Schulthess – postponed the introduction of pensions until the aftermath of World War II.

The struggle for the AHV was carried out in the public arena and endured a conflict-ridden and protracted policy-making process. In contrast, occupational provision began its expansion behind the scenes, in particular in the interstices of the tax code, and its evolution was rarely the focus of public controversies. This subterranean process coexisted with the highly contentious politics of social insurance. The first two sections of this chapter are devoted to these diverging trajectories.

In the aftermath of the war, political upheavals put the issue of social insurance at the top of the agenda.