ABSTRACT
The idea that every man is born free and equal to others convinced the French to supersede all given territorial, confessional, class and linguistic diversities and to found their political unity on historically unprecedented principles. The vision of the US as an imperial power is simply a product of the compound governing system, which continues to confirm its capacity to maintain unity of the American nation in today's epoch. The process of political unification of Germany was finished in 1871 with the establishment of the first German nation state, the German Reich. The transfer of sovereignty to the federal nation state was an unprecedented move for independent monarchies, which existed as politically, economically and administratively self-sufficient entities for centuries. Like the French nation, the Swiss nation was also born out of a political decision. It is the fact that the Swiss federal nation came to being by voluntary political association of its composing parts that makes it 'Willensnation'.
