All the forces in a centrifuge is towards the center. What this really means is that velocity of movement is not enough to decentralize. If only velocity was involved then the velocity of the object moving around a point would simply not change direction and revolve around the point, but would fly off into space. In that case it would be, as Dave Schuler suggests, take legions to make the connection outward from the center. It also would take a collaboration between the legions, Chinese and American to name a few, to maintain connections. It will be interesting to what becomes of American primacy/unipolarity in that event.

Lex and Dave have raised an important point, a flaw in the reasoning of most critics of American power, the a priori assumption that the geopolitical security status quo is some kind of " normal" or " natural" global baseline rather than a product of fifty+ years of American military, diplomatic and economic network-building. Withdraw those networks and the scenario changes as statesmen recalculate interests.

So, is American primacy/unipolarity itself a driver of centrifugal decentralization ?

It wasn’t the Roman roads that interconnected Europe, it was the Roman legions.  In a very real sense the Roman roads are just the artifacts of the logistics of the Roman legions.  When the legions withdrew, every robber baron and bandit chief could see a very good reason for interdicting traffic along the way and the absence of the legions reduced their operating costs.  The interconnectedness broke down.

Similarly, the Internet, satellite communications, and the worldwide oil trade are, in a very real sense, artifacts of U. S. military logistics.  If our Navy stops patrolling the sea lanes, I have no doubt that, in the presence of substantial rewards and reduced operating expenses, pirate fleets will disrupt oil traffic.  Once you’ve started paying tribute to prevent depradations you’ve increased the incentives and reduced the operating costs again.  It’s a feedback loop that results in reduced or no commerce.

Maybe it is not just about somebondy who’s willing to keep the wires up, but a interconnected system of nodes in which the nodes who hath not what he hath is not taken away. This would mean the system itself needs to have a worth or ethics to it that supplements the normal movement of a network in which he who hath it shall be given. of course that fact is probably a given. Of course in that system even those willing to knock the wires down would be included or perhaps not.

Smallness only works because of United States military dominance. In any other kind of world, small and successful states would be conquered and looted.

The finding assumes the Pax Americana.

Also, I think there’s probably a sort of selection bias in the measurement of “competitiveness”.  I wonder how the results would turn out if you considered Breton-only speakers in France, Spanish-only speakers in the United States, or Romansch-only speakers in Switzerland?

Said another way I wonder if, the larger the country, the more likely fallacies of composition are to skew data one way or another.  Note that doesn’t mean that big nations are really less competitive in any meaningful sense it just means that the measurement may not make any sense.
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So how about this vision of the future:  thousands of microstates (and virtual states) linked into networks of overlapping interest.  One state will be in multiple networks, depending on issues.  Any pair of states could in competitive networks and in cooperative networks at the same time.
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Which, of course, assumes there’s a referee around.  The difference between 10,000,000 isolated  villages and 10,000,000 interconnected nodes in a worldwide network of communications and trade is somebody who’s willing to keep the wires up.  Note:  there’s always somebody who’s willing to knock the wires down.

Size matters if there are economies of scale.  Economies of scale matter most in head-to-head competition in a relatively stable environment.  It also allows one more capital to throw into a project.  The costs of scale are that it is more difficult to make rapid changes, or to learn from the experience of others.  If, as Robb suggests, we are in a world requiring quick adaptation to asymmetric challenges (economic or security) there is a maximum size beyond which states no longer make sense, and that size may be shrinking.

Instead of unitary states or multiethnic empires, the capital accumulation problem can be handled by federations, common markets, etc.  Ethnic (or cultural) autonomy promotes experimentation, but a few limited common institutions allow those experiments–if successful–to be adopted, by consensus, on the larger scale.  Diversity allows choices and commonalities allow mutual support.  The result looks something like the alliances among airlines (for frequent flier programs and landing rights) or among microchip manufacturers (for R and D).

And has anyone been noticing what’s happening to Belgium lately?  It’s not Nigeria, by any means, but it’s getting more difficult to put together a government.

So how about this vision of the future:  thousands of microstates (and virtual states) linked into networks of overlapping interest.  One state will be in multiple networks, depending on issues.  Any pair of states could in competitive networks and in cooperative networks at the same time. 

Come to think of it, we’re not so far from that today.  Fragmentation within states, coupled with regional and global institutions. 

Agreed that the "First Nation" minorities are insufficient to effect major change (other than the redistricting of the Northwest Territories into two: NWT and Nunavut).

However, note that the Anglo-Québécois "hegemony" combined accounts for barely 40% of the population — not the kind of ethnic majority I’d associate with "bicultural".