Jurisdiction Size and Local Democracy: Evidence on Internal Political Efficacy from Large-scale Municipal Reform

Optimal jurisdiction size is a cornerstone of government design. A strong tradition in political thought argues that democracy thrives in smaller jurisdictions, but existing studies of the effects of jurisdiction size, mostly cross-sectional in nature, yield ambiguous results due to sorting effects...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The American political science review 2011-05, Vol.105 (2), p.238-258
Main Authors:	LASSEN, DAVID DREYER, SERRITZLEW, SØREN
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Administrative reform Central Government Citizen participation Citizens Control groups Debates Decision making Democracy Denmark Effectiveness Employment Estimators Governmental reform Jurisdiction Local elections Local government Local Politics Municipal government Organizational size Political culture Political efficiency Political ideologies Political reform Political science Politics Population Population size Public sector Reform Self sufficiency Traditions
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Summary:	Optimal jurisdiction size is a cornerstone of government design. A strong tradition in political thought argues that democracy thrives in smaller jurisdictions, but existing studies of the effects of jurisdiction size, mostly cross-sectional in nature, yield ambiguous results due to sorting effects and problems of endogeneity. We focus on internal political efficacy, a psychological condition that many see as necessary for high-quality participatory democracy. We identify a quasiexperiment, a large-scale municipal reform in Denmark, which allows us to estimate a causal effect of jurisdiction size on internal political efficacy. The reform, affecting some municipalities, but not all, was implemented by the central government, and resulted in exogenous, and substantial, changes in municipal population size. Based on survey data collected before and after the reform, we find, using various difference-in-difference and matching estimators, that jurisdiction size has a causal and sizeable detrimental effect on citizens' internal political efficacy.
ISSN:	0003-0554 1537-5943