Chechnya, Tatarstan, the Swedish minority in Finland and German-speakers in Italy have been touted as models.

ECONOMIST: Kosovo

The frisson came from a startling new book by Gunnar Wetterberg, a Swedish historian, proposing a pan-Nordic federation to unite Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden under a single monarch: Denmark's Queen Margrethe.

ECONOMIST: Nordic countries revisit an old idea: union

More than a quarter of the customers of Merita Nordbanken, a Finnish-Swedish firm, use its online bank, and almost 90% of those in technology-mad Finland.

ECONOMIST: Smile, you??re on the net