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Attitudes toward Technology and Communication 155

chose to analyse how various civil/political administrations in
Switzerland behave on the Internet.
Switzerland today consists of twenty-six cantons. The cantons—
often also referred to as “the States”—are the original States which
joined together to form the Federation to which they transferred
part of their sovereignty in 1848. Each canton and half-canton has
its own constitution, parliament, government and courts. French is
spoken in four cantons, Italian and Rhaeto-Romanch in one, respec-
tively, and German in eighteen; two cantons, where German and
French is spoken, are thus bilingual (see Figure 3).
In 1997, the Swiss “Institut de hautes études en administration
publique” (IDHEAP) in Lausanne carried out a study on “cyber-
administration” in Switzerland. The authors found that at the be-
ginning of 1997, 73% of the cantons were present on the Internet.
The only cantons which had no intention of becoming active on the
Net were located in the German-speaking part of Switzerland
(Poupa et al. 1997, 17). At least with regard to the development of

Figure 3
The Language Areas in Switzerland

Source: Basemap © SFSO Geostat / S F