Size Matters: Why not for contemporary empirical democratic theory?

Abstract

The question of how the size of a polity and the functioning of its democracy is curiously understudied, especially in a cross-national, empirical fashion. After introducing the issue, this survey offers an overview of the various lines of research related to this topic including that on: legislatures, political participation, free-riding, and complexity and heterogeneity. After a review of the extant literature, several potential reasons for the widespread neglect of such an important topic are offered. In the final section I put forth three methodological frameworks the should prove useful for advancing our knowledge on this topic, which in include and “economic” approach, logical-quantitative modeling and agent-based simulation.