Thursday, May 15, 2008

Swiss model

Much has been written about the seeming paradox of declining national borders, but rising regionalism (the Belgian mess gets a lot of press in Europe). And Paul Collier finds civil wars to be among the four plagues of The Botttom Billion. But most of these are expressions of tribalism which breaks out across and within national borders.

All this makes the Swiss model so fascinating. (Looking a better source than Naylor). Tribalism may have been useful in our evolutionary past, but it is poison now.

It may be too much to ask that the model has lessons for others, but there are (sadly) so few others.