As I said, Italy is already in the EU. Why would the small territories of Italy be "feuding" if they were all part of the EU? And I'm not sure that the administ

As I said, Italy is already in the EU. Why would the small territories of Italy be "feuding" if they were all part of the EU? And I'm not sure that the administration would be much more redundant than it is now. On the other hand, you seem to be taking in account only the economic aspects of a unification. Yes, a unification process with poorer countries would be expensive, but maybe that's not the major issue with it. The issue I'm more worried about is that in a democracy the prevalent culture shapes the administration and, of course, the society. Unifying the US with, say, Venezuela, doesn't mean turning 31 million Venezuelans into Americans; it means making the US 10% more like Venezuela. It changes the identity of the country, and you might like the current identity better than the new one.