Abstract

This paper addresses the topic of internal economic gaps and their political consequences, such as secessions, independence movements or unifications (as it happened in Germany). The article offers an overview to understand whether such radical processes can trigger convergences between two areas, or on the contrary increase them. In particular, the paper analyses with the support of statistical evidence the cases of the «Czechoslovakian velvet divorce» and the tragic fragmentation of Yugoslavia: both were realities with strong internal dualities, afflicted from extractive systems that once collapsed made it possible for different communities to go their own way albeit with different results. The proposed case studies open the path to considerations on past, present and future relationships of areas such as Germany, Catalonia, but also northern and southern Italy. Understanding the interaction between the ruling class of a country, the centrifugal forces and the profound reasons that determine them give the dimension of the value of the latter. An evidence of this can be found in the case of Germany: reunified in 1989, by absorbing the GDR Germany create the conditions, through colossal investments, for the economic unification of the country; while in Italy the period of maximum convergence is associated with an institution, the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, condemned to a damnatio memorie. The analysis adopts a non-pre-conceptual approach to the destiny of large national states, since the international conditions of the twenty-first century in Europe have no precedent in history: the emergence of the single market for goods and people, the community currency which guarantees price stability and circulation of capital, and building of the Atlantic shield (whose value we now rediscover in some dramatic contemporary events). We ask ourselves whether the conditions of peace and prosperity we experience today allow us to overcome some of the taboos of the last century and open up the experiences of small state entities that can draw great opportunities from the globalized market. Finally, an attempt is made to understand whether this perspective is applicable to the South (and how). Or whether if it rather represents a mere theoretical exercise, considering the context and the balance of forces existing within the country