ABSTRACT
What kind of title is this? Is it a joke and if so, who is the joke on? How did a small country in the middle of Europe, with no raw materials, no
natural resources and no access to the sea-not even a single national languagedevelop into a flourishing modern state facing all the challenges of globalization in the 21st century? Switzerland never even had much arable land-over twothirds of the country, which is barely 10% the size of the state of California, is covered with inhospitable, desolate mountains.
