How Liechtenstein divides state power between a prince and its voters

Why Liechtenstein has two holders of state power

Article 2 of the constitution of 1921 defines the principality as "a constitutional hereditary monarchy on a democratic and parliamentary basis" and anchors state power "in the prince and in the people". The Historisches Lexikon, in its entry on the political system written by Wilfried Marxer, calls the result a mixed form, neither democratic nor autocratic, and records the two names it goes by in the literature: a dualistic form of state, or an elliptical one.

Marxer draws the contrast with the rest of Europe. Many European democracies keep a monarchy as a largely symbolic relic; in Liechtenstein, he writes, the division of power is real, and it shows most plainly in two places. The prince can refuse the sanction, his assent, to any law passed by the Landtag or by the voters. And since the revision of 2003 he can dismiss the government at any time, a power the Landtag also holds. For the way he uses either power the prince answers only to the princely house, which holds disciplinary authority over him under its house law.

The same revision widened the other side. Since 2003 the voters have been free, in a dispute, to abolish the monarchy by lawful means and introduce a republican form of state. Each holder of state power therefore has a legal route to overrule the other, and both routes begin outside the parliament: the veto with the prince, the abolition procedure with a popular initiative.

Outside assessments of the arrangement differ. The Wikipedia account of the country cites the BBC describing Liechtenstein after 2003 as "Europe's only absolute monarchy", and records that the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe concluded in an extensive report that several provisions were incompatible with European democratic standards. The same account notes that both the 2003 revision and its reaffirmation in 2012 were approved by large majorities in referendums with high turnout. Liechtenstein: history follows how the dispute over the prince's powers built up from 1992.

What the prince of Liechtenstein can refuse

The prince's part in legislation is an initiative and a veto. A law or a constitutional amendment has to be adopted by the Landtag, signed by the prince and countersigned by the head of government, and published in the Law Gazette before it applies. The veto is absolute and used at the prince's discretion. It reaches laws the voters themselves have passed, and on 1 July 2012 the voters were asked whether it should stop doing so. The proposal would have removed the prince's power to veto the result of a referendum, and 76% voted against it, so the electorate kept a power held over its own decisions.

Beyond the veto the prince can issue decrees, and emergency decrees where the security and welfare of the country are at stake; a countersignature by the head of government is still required. He convenes and adjourns the Landtag and, for serious reasons, may adjourn it for three months or dissolve it. Since 1945 a prince has dissolved the Landtag early four times. Three of those followed a deadlock inside the chamber: in 1953 over appointments to the board of the old-age and survivors' insurance, in 1958 over an electoral complaint and in 1989 over the affair around the constitutional court. The fourth, in 1993, came after a motion of no confidence against the head of government Markus Büchel, while the Landtag was still able to work.

The prince also represents the state abroad and signs treaties in person or through a plenipotentiary, though some treaties take effect only once the Landtag has ratified them. He may mitigate or commute sentences that have become final and may halt criminal investigations already opened, a power the constitution calls abolition. Every judgment of a Liechtenstein court is issued in his name.

A prince may also act through a deputy. In August 2004 Hans-Adam II handed the day-to-day running of the country to his son Alois while keeping the title of head of state, and Britannica records the same transfer.

How the Landtag and the government are formed

Who sits in the Landtag

The Landtag is a single chamber of 25 members elected for four years by proportional representation in two constituencies, which are the two purchases the principality was assembled from: 15 seats for the Oberland, the former county of Vaduz, and 10 for the Unterland, the former lordship of Schellenberg. The chamber had 15 seats until an amendment approved by referendum in 1988 raised it to 25, and the new split applied from 1989. Proportional representation itself dates from 1939. A threshold of 8% of the national vote, written into the constitution by referendum in 1973, applies to every list, and the Wikipedia account equates it with two seats.

Every member sits in addition to an ordinary profession, so the Landtag is a part-time parliament. It debates and adopts laws and constitutional amendments, assents to the important treaties, elects the members of the government and the judges, sets the annual budget, approves taxes and supervises the administration. A president and a deputy are elected at the opening sitting of each year. During the recess, which normally runs from January to February or March, a National Committee of the president and four other members carries the chamber's duties, and one has to be elected whenever the Landtag is adjourned or dissolved.

How a government is appointed and dismissed

The government is five people: a head of government and four government councillors, each of whom runs a group of ministries. The prince appoints them on the Landtag's proposal and with its agreement, and at least two members have to come from each of the two regions, so the Oberland and the Unterland are both inside the executive whatever the election result. A councillor may not sit in the Landtag. The size of the government, how it is chosen and how long it serves were reorganised by constitutional amendment in 1965.

Since 2003 the government leaves office when it loses the confidence of either the prince or the Landtag. Where a single councillor loses the confidence of one of them, the two decide together whether that member may go on exercising the office. The prince may also appoint a provisional government for at most four months without the Landtag's consent. The government therefore answers to both holders of state power that Article 2 names.

How Liechtenstein's voters legislate beside the Landtag

Initiative and referendum came into the constitution of 1921 on the Swiss model, and the voters' rights have been extended at intervals since. Against a decision of the Landtag they can call a referendum. They can propose laws and constitutional amendments of their own, call for the Landtag to be convened, and vote to dissolve it. A referendum on treaties was added by amendment in 1992, and the Lexikon dates the right to take part in treaty decisions from 1993. The 2003 revision added the procedure to abolish the monarchy and, in particular cases, a popular vote on the appointment of a judge.

The Wikipedia account of the system gives 1,000 citizens as enough to call a referendum on any law, and a higher threshold of 1,500 for votes that would dissolve the Landtag or change the constitution. Communes hold the same rights collectively: resolutions from three communes can force a popular vote on a law, and from four on a constitutional amendment.

The electorate these rights belong to is narrower than the resident population. Britannica gives the franchise as every citizen aged 18 or over living in the principality. Foreigners made up 34% of residents in 2003, on the Lexikon's figures, and in 2002 they held 18,805 of the 28,814 jobs in the country, a total of employment that included 13,030 commuters. A large part of the people the Landtag legislates for cannot vote for it.

Women were added to the electorate late and by a vote of men. Referendums in 1968, 1971 and 1973 rejected women's suffrage, and on 1 July 1984 a referendum in which only men could vote passed it with 51.3%. At the Landtag election of 2025, 16,171 ballots were cast for a turnout of 76.3%, and 97% of the votes came in by post.

Why two parties governed Liechtenstein together for decades

Parties came late. The first, the Christian-Social People's Party around Wilhelm Beck, was founded before the Landtag election of March 1918, and its opponents answered with the Progressive Citizens' Party (FBP) in December. The People's Party merged with the Heimatdienst early in 1936 to form the Patriotic Union (VU). In the 1920s and 1930s the Landtag was elected by majority vote, which produced clear but disproportionate majorities and a hard-fought, divided politics through the 1930s.

The change came in 1938. After Germany annexed Austria, the leaders of the VU used the moment to force the FBP into proportional shares of government, Landtag and administration. The two parties agreed on proportional representation and formed a coalition, and in the spring of 1939 they filled the Landtag through a silent election on a joint list, eight FBP members and seven VU. That coalition lasted until 1997, all-party government until 1993 and a grand coalition facing the Free List after that.

Marxer's assessment of those decades is critical. Under what he calls co-opposition, the parties in government were also the only check on it, and control of power worked inadequately. A threshold he describes as prohibitively high kept the two large parties unchallenged for a long time, which encouraged patronage and client networks reaching into most areas of public life, held in place by party loyalties handed down in families. The two parties sat close to each other ideologically, both Christian and conservative, which narrowed the choice further. The newspapers followed the parties: from 1918 the two existing papers turned into party organs, and as of the Lexikon entry of 2011 the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt stood close to the FBP and the Liechtensteiner Vaterland close to the VU.

The Free List, founded in 1985, became the first third party to enter the Landtag, in February 1993. In 1997 the FBP lost the election and went into opposition, ending the coalition that had run since 1938. The VU governed alone from 1997 to 2001 and the FBP from 2001 to 2005, and Marxer judged that the parties' positions became easier to tell apart. After the 2005 election the two large parties formed a coalition again. The Independents entered in 2013, the first time four parties won seats. At the election of 2025 the Democrats for Liechtenstein, a third party, took six seats.

Organised interests reach the government mostly through the consultation procedure on draft laws, the Vernehmlassung. The Lexikon names the employees' association founded in 1920, the chamber of trades and commerce of 1936, the chamber of industry and commerce of 1947 and the bankers' association of 1969 among them.

How judges are chosen in Liechtenstein

Before 1921 the country's highest courts sat outside it: appeals went to the princely court chancellery in Vienna and the supreme court sat in Innsbruck. The constitution of 1921 moved every court into Liechtenstein and put the whole administration under judicial review, through an administrative court and a court of public law to protect constitutional rights, the Staatsgerichtshof, created by law in 1925.

The ordinary courts run in three instances: the Princely Court of Justice in Vaduz, the Princely Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Beside them sit the Administrative Court and the Staatsgerichtshof, which rules on whether laws conform to the constitution and has five members and five alternates.

The 2003 revision rewrote how judges are chosen. The prince and the Landtag select candidates through a joint panel, and the prince chairs it and holds the casting vote. If the Landtag elects the candidate the panel recommends, the prince appoints that person. If the Landtag rejects the candidate and no agreement on another can be reached, the Landtag must put up a counter-candidate and call a referendum, and in that case citizens may nominate candidates of their own by initiative. The same revision removed the Staatsgerichtshof's role as the body that decided disputes between the government and the Landtag over how a provision of the constitution should be read.

The Wikipedia account records that prisoners sentenced to more than two years are transferred to Austrian jurisdiction.

What Liechtenstein's communes decide for themselves

Below the state sits a second political level, the Gemeinde. There are eleven communes, six in the Oberland and five in the Unterland: Vaduz, Balzers, Triesen, Triesenberg, Schaan and Planken in the south, Eschen, Mauren, Gamprin, Ruggell and Schellenberg in the north. Communal autonomy was introduced in 1864. Each commune takes its own decisions under the communes act, subject to supervision by the government, and Britannica records that mayors and councils are elected every three years.

Seven of the eleven communes include one or more exclaves beside their main area, and in about half of them a citizens' cooperative owns forest and pasture for collective use, along with parcels left for private use.

The 2003 revision gave each commune the right to leave the state if a majority of the citizens entitled to vote who live there decide to begin a withdrawal procedure. The state that its history describes as two purchases joined by an imperial act thus has a constitution that lets any one of its eleven communes leave it.

Why Switzerland conducts part of Liechtenstein's foreign policy

The customs treaty signed with Switzerland on 29 March 1923, in force from 1 January 1924, is the legal basis of the closest relationship Liechtenstein has. There has been no customs border with Switzerland since. Swiss customs law and other federal law apply in Liechtenstein as far as the customs union requires, and every trade and customs treaty Switzerland concludes with a third state applies to Liechtenstein as well, with Switzerland authorised to negotiate and sign on its behalf. Switzerland has taken on Liechtenstein's diplomatic representation since 1919 wherever Liechtenstein has no mission of its own. Liechtenstein closed its legation in Bern in 1933 and reopened it at the end of 1944.

Membership in its own right had to be negotiated with Switzerland first, and under the customs treaty joining a treaty or organisation Switzerland does not belong to needs a bilateral agreement. A revision in 1990 let Liechtenstein become a member of trade agreements and organisations in its own right, and it joined EFTA in 1991, with the record dating membership from 1 September, and the WTO in 1995. The EEA took a second revision. Liechtenstein voted for membership with 55.8% on 11 and 13 December 1992 while Switzerland voted against, the treaty was revised again in 1994, a second referendum passed with 55.9% on 7 and 9 April 1995, and Liechtenstein joined on 1 May 1995. To sit in the Swiss and the European economic areas at once, it runs a market surveillance system with its own customs office, and it obtained a special arrangement on free movement that lets it keep limiting immigration by number.

The other memberships followed a path of their own: the Council of Europe in 1978, the United Nations on 18 September 1990, the Schengen and Dublin agreements, joined together with Switzerland in 2008, with the record dating Schengen membership from 19 December 2011, and the International Monetary Fund on 21 October 2024. Liechtenstein keeps missions in Vienna, Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Strasbourg and Washington, and permanent missions to the United Nations in New York and Geneva. The Wikipedia account, revised in September 2026, counts diplomatic missions from 78 countries accredited to Liechtenstein, most of them resident in Bern.

There is no army. The Landtag refused to fund one after the German Confederation dissolved in 1866, and the prince gave way on 12 February 1868. Britannica records that neutrality was proclaimed at the same time and that defence is the responsibility of Switzerland. The National Police works with the Austrian and Swiss forces under a trilateral treaty, and on 20 September 2017 Liechtenstein signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.