What "Eccentric" states could exist today?

Prussia if you had created some thing like it in fiction people would tell you it's unrealistic also Venice
Honestly for a German principality Prussia was pretty normal, if surprisingly successful. Take Reuss elder line, which was so conservative it had to be forced by Prussia at gunpoint to adopt any constitution at all, opposed any change (e.g. the BGB), did grudgingly found its first high school in the 1880s and was still using a 18th century administrative organization until 1918.
Or Mecklenburg, where the estates held onto their 1523 constitution until 1918. It was maybe the only German state were the ruling princes actively tried to force a modern constitution onto their people and failed due to local opposition multiple times since 1848. The last prince considered a defacto coup to finally get one. Despite this the state was otherwise fairly modern.
 
Would the Channel Islands (and maybe Isle of Man) count? They are technically independent though closely linked to the UK. Sark sticks in my mind as retaining some feudal-looking laws/practices - eg the right to appeal directly to the local ruler in the street for help.
 
That sounds cursed but interesting.

Along the same lines, the Futurists aren't able to take hold in Italy, but turn Eritrea into their personal playground - bonus points if, owing to the inevitable conflict there'll be between traditionalist mainland Fascism and modernist colonial Futurism, the local government switches sides after Mussolini allies with Hitler, and a native Eritrean member of the àscari colonial troops becomes the de facto leader of the de facto independent country from 1945 onwards - they wouldn't be the first, nor the last person with such a background to seize power in post-colonial Africa.

Cue an Afro-Futurist fever dream that, owing to Eritrea's geographical location, might become a Singapore on steroids.
 
Fraxinet, as I've mentioned before, is another historical oddity that intrigues me. Might an Islamic micro-state persist to the modern-day, close to Saint-Tropez?

In my RPG EDCverse after the USA falls apart New York becomes a city-state and continues well into the 22nd century.

Then there's the urban legend of Taured, maybe a replacement for Andorra?
 
Might an Islamic micro-state persist to the modern-day, close to Saint-Tropez?
Speaking of Islamic micro-states, the Ottomans having a few acres around the Blue Mosque and their palaces in Constantinople/Istanbul as an Islamic version of the Vatican could be an interesting microstate to ponder.
 
Amin's Uganda and Pol Pot's Cambodia were definitely eccentric, but also thoroughly nasty. Maybe a determined but less evil leader could have created a poor but stable Cambodia that at least wasn't deliberately genocidal.
Another possibility is to keep Albania as a (slightly) less reclusive agricultural state with virtually no motorised vehicles (and lots of bunkers). You'd need a very controlling government but they don't have to be bad, just very conservative and wary of reform
 
Amin's Uganda and Pol Pot's Cambodia were definitely eccentric, but also thoroughly nasty. Maybe a determined but less evil leader could have created a poor but stable Cambodia that at least wasn't deliberately genocidal.
Another possibility is to keep Albania as a (slightly) less reclusive agricultural state with virtually no motorised vehicles (and lots of bunkers). You'd need a very controlling government but they don't have to be bad, just very conservative and wary of reform

What about a "honest" evil dictatorship?

Like, most authoritarian regimes try to excuse their behaviour with hot takes and propaganda, this regime's explanation for their disregard of human rights would be along the lines of "because yes" and "because we can". Openly engaging in oppression for its own sake, if not straight up boasting about it. Carrying on even when there isn't any economic incentive to the power trip, or even if it's counterproductive, just because doing so is wholesome fun for all the family.
 
What about a "honest" evil dictatorship?

Like, most authoritarian regimes try to excuse their behaviour with hot takes and propaganda, this regime's explanation for their disregard of human rights would be along the lines of "because yes" and "because we can". Openly engaging in oppression for its own sake, if not straight up boasting about it. Carrying on even when there isn't any economic incentive to the power trip, or even if it's counterproductive, just because doing so is wholesome fun for all the family.
Isn't that basically 1984's Oceania?
"Because it can; power for the sake of power". (The issue is that the rest of the world would try and make it collapse as quickly as possible?)
 
Honestly for a German principality Prussia was pretty normal, if surprisingly successful. Take Reuss elder line, which was so conservative it had to be forced by Prussia at gunpoint to adopt any constitution at all, opposed any change (e.g. the BGB), did grudgingly found its first high school in the 1880s and was still using a 18th century administrative organization until 1918.
Or Mecklenburg, where the estates held onto their 1523 constitution until 1918. It was maybe the only German state were the ruling princes actively tried to force a modern constitution onto their people and failed due to local opposition multiple times since 1848. The last prince considered a defacto coup to finally get one. Despite this the state was otherwise fairly modern.
I think it was Bismarck who said that when the end of the world came, he would just go to Mecklenburg, since everything there happened about 15 years behind everywhere else :p
 
Another candidate for a "western counterpart to Singapore": A surviving city-state of Ragusa, where the Dalmatian language has been revived to strengthen its people's sense of nationhood, governed in a way similar to pre-Napoleonic Venice.
 
I wonder if during the end of WW2 and Cold War decolonization you could have a collapse in the style of The New Order, Thousand Week Reich and Kaiserreich mods for Hearts of Iron.
 
Okinawa becomes independent after ww2, and it's lax tax laws and regulations makes it a Cuba/Macau on steroids, with Yakuza and triads fighting over casino neon lights.
Throw in a brief period of them being a US territory and likely having a strong US military presence even to this day and you have probably one of the weirdest combinations on the planet.
 
Isn't that basically 1984's Oceania?
"Because it can; power for the sake of power". (The issue is that the rest of the world would try and make it collapse as quickly as possible?)

That's what O'Brien tells Winston Smith at the end of the novel, but the fact that he had to tell him implies that Oceania's regime still tried to justify its policies, even if through blatant lies (internal enemies such as Goldstein, and external enemies such as the other two states); here, there are no blatant lies, in fact, the people in power might not even try to hide or justify their abuses and corruption. It'd basically be a sociopath's wet dream.
 
this regime's explanation for their disregard of human rights would be along the lines of "because yes" and "because we can". Openly engaging in oppression for its own sake, if not straight up boasting about it. Carrying on even when there isn't any economic incentive to the power trip, or even if it's counterproductive, just because doing so is wholesome fun for all the family.
Every government needs some type of legitimacy.
 
If Ungern-Sterberg managed to conquer most of Mongolia and hold off the Soviets for long enough to establish himself, than we’d have an insane Russian warlord who though he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan as the tinpot dictator of a Buddhist theocratic Mongolia who sends cavalry charges against machine guns and has opponents of his regime massacred in the streets with weapons of a long-past era. If Ungern-Sternberg’s Mongolia manages to stay neutral during World War Two, his anti-semitism and anti-communism will make it a popular destination for ex-Nazis trying to escape punishment, which would only further isolate the Mad Baron’s hermit khanate.

Another option would be than World War II ends in a Nazi victory, and the Ustashe continue to rule Croatia. After Hitler dies, Germany collapses into civil war, leading to the fall of the Nazi regime. After the fall of Nazism in Germany, a bunch of Nazi loyalists emigrate to Ustashe Croatia, which is now the lone bastion of fascism in Europe. In addition, the Ustashe’s leadership are excommunicated once word of their crimes gets out, and so a new religion is created combining Christianity, Germanic paganism(the Ustashe claimed that Croats were actually Germanic and not Slavic), anti-semitism, “scientific” racism, and absolute loyalty to the Poglavnik. The German Nazis are remembered as predecessors of the Ustashe regime who fell because they were insufficiently racially monolithic. The Ustashe sets out on a campaign to purge Croatia of its Slavic influence and restore it to its imagined Germanic past through a mixture of eugenics, ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Jews, and attempting to destroy their own culture in order to restore a previous one that never existed.
 
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