Which additional countries could have realistically adopted a Swiss-style cantonal system? For instance, in this alternate history article about Franz Ferdinand surviving, it had the Kingdom of Hungary adopt such a cantonal system:
Could Austria have done the same thing? And could other territories, such as British India post-independence, especially if it would have successfully avoided partition in this TL, have likewise adopted the same or at least a similar Swiss-style cantonal model for themselves?
RANZ FERDINANDHAD NOT DIED IN SARAJEVO | Hungarian Review
A Counterfactual History of Hungary, 1914–1919* Alternative or counterfactual history is not merely fiction or wishful thinking. According to E. H. Carr in his seminal What is History? (1961), the historian’s task is to ‘explain why one course was eventually chosen rather than another’. But whil ...
hungarianreview.com
On 15 March, the day of the 1848 liberal revolution, Oszkár Jászi, the Minister for the National Minorities, submitted three bills on self-government (partly territorial, partly cultural) for the Slovaks, Rusyns, and Germans. The model was the cantonal system of Switzerland. A separate bill changed the borders of the counties (and the constituencies) so as to make them correspond, as far as possible, to the national composition of the population. In the overwhelmingly Romanian, Saxon, and Serb counties, cultural autonomy ensured the use of the language of the majority in the schools and in local government, naturally without restricting the use of Hungarian. After often heated debates, the House passed the new laws with overwhelming majorities. King Charles deliberately chose to endorse these laws on 11 April, the day when his predecessor approved the famous April Laws in 1848, the foundation of modern constitutional Hungary. The world press was full of praise for the Hungarians who had voluntarily given up their privileges for the second time since 1848. A leading article in The Times congratulated both the Hungarians and their minorities. It said that by recognizing the European mission of the Monarchy and their basic common interests, they had overcome the policy of national egotism, and with that, they called upon the peoples living in the other half of the realm of the Habsburgs to follow this example. According to the archives of The Times, the author of the article was the foreign editor, H. W. Steed.29 The National Széchényi Library holds his letter to Mrs Ferenc Hampel, née Polyxena Pulszky, dated 12 April 1918. ‘Dear Poly, I’ll never forget the warm welcome you gave me and Rose in your home seventeen years ago. I know that a few years later you were pained reading my critical reports of the Hungarian Coalition, because you felt they were attacks on your nation. The dramatic events of the last two years—I am confident—justified both of us: among the Hungarians the political acumen and responsibility which marked Deák, Eötvös, and the young István Tisza, have come to prevail. You, my dear Poly, your late father, your husband and sons were such outstanding representatives of that tradition. Fifty years after the Ausgleich, the wisest Hungarian leaders concluded with the dynasty and its Austro-German people, a new generation of gifted Hungarians have brought about an even more difficult compact with their own national minorities. That is what your respected father, Ferenc, and his friend, Lajos Kossuth, wished for in the years of their exile. It is now that the vision of the great István Széchenyi can be realized, so that the multinational Kingdom of Hungary’s future may be even brighter than its glory was in its best former periods.’30
Could Austria have done the same thing? And could other territories, such as British India post-independence, especially if it would have successfully avoided partition in this TL, have likewise adopted the same or at least a similar Swiss-style cantonal model for themselves?