The US federal model is considerably more devolved than most regions in most countries. The EU nations, particularly the so-called Eurozone where currency is shared and economies are tightly bound, are closer to US states than most other independent countries are. There's a spectrum.

So do the US and Zimbabwe.

The issue is only partly economic, it's also cultural. Europe's countries are far more culturally varied than US states; different opinions, different priorities, different norms. Crimea, Basque, Scot, Northern Ireland... The economies are also sufficiently varied that one ring to rule them all is absurd, resulting in tensions between the historical cultural groups, aka countries. The UK is increasingly interesting on this matter.

Um, yeah. Think you've misunderstood.

I'll just keep on turning it around - why would some folks in New York, for instance, decide for people living in Alabama, or Wyoming?

Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one.

Move a city boy from New Jersey to Alaska or deep Lousiana and see how much of a stranger he ends up being, even if the language is technically the same.

Google "Westphalian Sovereignty" and go from there.

Is Scotland a country? Is Wales?

One can make arguments like "why would some folks in England, for instance, decide for people living in Scotland, or Northern Ireland?" but where do you draw the line? Wales has less autonomy than Scotland but is still a "country" on Wikipedia, are they oppressed? Inverness has social policy dictated from the Lowlands, is it not a true democracy then? `davidw in the next comment thread over isn't too happy with the amount of power Wyoming has over California, can it work in the long run? Or is it only EU federation that HN will complain about?