During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, such Swiss laws as the abolition of child labor, the federal regulation of industrial factories (Fabrikgesetz, 1877), and liability law reform (Haftpflichtgesetz, 1881) were considered in Europe to be innovative social policy measures. Significant fractions of the bourgeois Radical elites who had established the modern Confederation in 1848 were, at least rhetorically, in favor of social insurance. Support for social reform was especially strong on the left wing of the Radical or Free Democratic Party (Freisinnige Demokratische Partei), which was committed to developing the social and economic infrastructure of the federal state. In 1886, three years after the introduction of Chancellor Bismarck's social insurance programs in Germany, Radical politicians who dominated the Federal Council (executive branch) and leading members of the Grütli Society (precursor of the Socialist Party, founded in 1888) called for the development of social policy. In 1890, the Federal Assembly enacted a constitutional amendment that set the legal foundation for the introduction of social insurance programs.

Given this favorable context, it seemed that Switzerland, like its German and Austrian neighbors, would soon introduce ground-breaking legislation covering such risks as sickness, accident, disability, and old age. However, from this point on, social policy debates veered away from this tentative Bismarckian path. Two decades after the 1890 constitutional amendment, the Confederation had introduced only accident insurance, while health policy remained limited to the subsidization of existing mutual benefit societies.