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The unified nation-state has exerted a powerful grip on the sociological imagination, with history often presented as a teleological process marked by territorial integration and functional differentiation. In practice, both function and territory have always marked political and social order. States have had different degrees of success in integrating territories within their borders. Territory is not just a feature of pre-modern societies but is reproduced in successive phases of modernization.

The post-2008 recession has made territorial management increasingly difficult. Postponing fiscal reform or buying off territorial demands has become impossible, given European rules about debts and deficits. Territorial politics has become increasingly competitive. In some territories that combine economic wealth with a strong sense of identity, separatist pressures have grown. Yet, when pro-independence parties are pressed on their visions for independence, they tend to revert to ideas more akin to confederalism or asymmetrical federalism. Centrifugal tendencies are balanced by centrifugal tendencies so that the outcome is more likely to be further rescaling rather than the formation of new nation-states on the lines of the old ones