The fundamental difference between German Unification and Italian Unification is that unification in Germany was peaceful and unification in Italy was violent. German Unification was a mostly diplomatic process that started with an economic and customs union in 1818 (the Zollverein) and ended with the proclamation of Wilhelm of Prussia as Kaiser following his victory in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. Although there certainly were strong pressures on the other German rulers by Prussian diplomats and politicians, the union was peaceful. The independent German rulers were able to preserve their roles in the new German Empire, which consequentially adopted a federal character.

On the other hand, Italy was unified through a series of wars in which the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont forcibly removed the rulers of the other Italian states and held (possibly rigged) referendums asking the people if they would like to join the new Italian Kingdom. So post-unification history of Italy is characterized by a series of military occupations followed by a Piedmontese bureaucratic class dismantling the local administrative structures and replacing them with Piedmontese ones. Further, the consensus among Italian economic historians is that Southern Italy was an administrative mess, as the Kingdom of Naples could not or would not abandon its semi-feudal system of government. Centralized rule was seen as a means to construct a modern system of government.