The Swiss political party system gradually took shape in the 19th century.

After the fall of Napoleon, the lines of division in Switzerland were fairly clear-cut between the conservatives and aristocrats who wanted to go back to the pre-1798 system of rule by a privileged few, and the progressives known in German as "Freisinnige" ("Free Thinkers"), who believed in equal rights for all.

The conservatives supported cantonal authority, while the progressives wanted a federal state.

But even before 1848 splits had started to emerge among the Freisinnige over the way in which rights and freedoms should best be balanced.

The progressives eventually split three ways:
The Liberals represented the industrial entrepreneurs, who believed in free enterprise with no state interference and who defended the rights of businessmen.
The Radicals had a more social policy and believed the state should play a role in the economy.
The Democrats, who emerged in the 1860s, favoured "pure democracy" and believed the electorate as a whole should be the body which took political decisions, rather than their elected representatives.

However, it was only in the 1890s that the three factions split officially. The Radicals formed their own party in 1894, the Freisinnig Demokratische Partei (FDP), which is one of the parties with seats in the Swiss government today. (Its English name is the Free Democratic Party; in French it is the Parti radical-démocratique.)

The workers themselves were poorly organised and their concerns were largely ignored. Protests were put down and severely punished. However, self-help groups started appearing in the 1830s under the influence of political refugees from Germany.

The Social Democratic party was founded in 1888 to represent workers' interests.

Despite their defeat in the Sonderbund war, Catholic conservatives did not disappear from political life. Although they were weak at federal level, they enjoyed considerable support in the Catholic cantons. Until 1912 their party was known as the Catholic Conservative Party

In the Swiss context, conservatism meant defending local structures and culture against the might of the liberal-radical centre. As such, conservatism cut across the religious divide. Not all Catholics were conservative, and not all conservatives were Catholic.

After many years of being sidelined at federal level, the Catholic Conservatives gradually managed to reassert themselves. In 1891 they succeeded for the first time in getting a member, Joseph Zemp, into the Federal Council.