The New Europe With Lasting Peace (100 year old map)
As a Swiss I find this interesting, but I think it misses an integral part of what is a ‘Kanton’, at least most of them: A former city state that has joined the confederation on ‘its own will’, however that worked for the local government at the time of joining. By becoming a ‘Kanton’, the main form of governance of the confederation has become mandated, direct democracy.<p>IMO this requires a coherent existing local government that is representative of local culture to the point where a majority of its inhabitants at least agrees with how they’re governed. Note that this doesn’t necessarily imply homogenous ethnicity, language or religion (although in Switzerland it <i>did</i> separate into catholic vs. protestant regions). A brain-child like this map could never work in this way. But I have some hope that a Kantonal &#x2F; confederate system could prevail if there was a collapse in European nation states. Switzerland, if it still exists at that point, could serve as an example that has proven itself stable since 1847. While that doesn’t match the age of the US system, it’s still older than most continuous European republics.