Condettiere - I believe your comparison with the French Revolution will prove to be the most accurate.

BB, - I don't know enough about Bosnia to make any assessment. I would be interested to see if it really does exist with two separate systems in the same territory.

T22 – The Amish make for an interesting argument, but as you say, they really do not have their own laws as much as they have strictly enforced social norms.

The more I think about this the more I find it unlikely to be successful. Humans are territorial. Ethnic groups often define themselves with regards to a place on the face of the earth. This connection along with ideas about the secular state are sometimes associated with the birth of nationalism, although I personally think of a “nation” as a group of people who share a common heritage, language, myths, history, and territory – a “state” is the government overlaid upon the nation. I cringe every time I hear the term “nation-building” being associated with places like Afghanistan. Outsiders can build a state – that is just the functional components of government. Outsiders cannot build a nation – that only members of that nation can do.