Municipality size, political efficacy and political participation: a systematic review

Abstract

It is an old adage that local government is a training ground for democracy. Its human scale means that political amateurs can contribute effectively and meaningfully to the politics of a state. But in a political climate seemingly driven to consolidate local government into ever larger units, can a not so local local government still elicit an efficacious and participatory citizenry? This paper explores the effect of municipality population size on two important aspects of democratic culture: political efficacy and political participation. Via a two-part systematic review, the paper examines how extant empirical literature bears on the relationship between size and both of these aspects, hypothesising that political efficacy plays a mediating role between size and participation. The findings are unequivocal: citizens of smaller municipalities feel a greater sense of political efficacy and participate to a greater degree in local politics.

A comparative analysis to depict underlying attributes that might determine successful implementation of local adaptation plans

“…Their explanation to this is that larger populations have a more developed check-and-balance system, a more developed capacity to contain conflicts, a more developed political infrastructure, and a higher degree of political institutionalization. More recently, it has been said that jurisdiction size has a causal and sizeable detrimental effect on citizens' internal political efficacy ( Lassen and Serritzlew, 2011 ), maybe because citizens who live in smaller municipalities feel a greater sense of political efficacy and participate more in local politics ( McDonnell, 2020 ).…”

How Coerced Municipal Amalgamations Thwart the Values of Local Self-Government

“…The argument we have presented above has implications for the ongoing debates around the world, about the need for amalgamation reforms. From previous studies, we can be fairly certain that amalgamations have adverse effects on local democracy (e.g., Dreyer-Lassen and Serritzlew 2014;Hansen 2014;Kjaer, Hjelmar, and Olsen 2010;McDonnell 2019;Nielsen 2003;Suzuki and Ha 2017). 5 One could argue that such costs would be acceptable if we were certain that economies of scale are realized through amalgamations.…”

Patterns of Policy Networks at the Local Level in Germany

“…In a local community, participation in politics may be considered easier compared to the increasing professionalization at higher levels like the state. This is sometimes coupled with a strengthened participation of citizens, an attribution of more inclusive and more vivid democracy or with the idea that the municipality is the place to learn democratic politics (McDonnell, 2020). In this context, the role of specific local party structures is of particular interest.…”

“…Yet, the interaction of political actors within the formal institutional boundaries of a local council remains a research gap for several reasons. In local politics, place is reassigned a decisive role, because policies are localized and the political arena is no longer bounded by topics or institutional settings, but by the community itself, in which people interact beyond boards and issues (McDonnell, 2020). The role of parties is more ambiguous than in national political systems and assigned offices could pre‐structure relationships like those between councilors and the mayor (Lapuente, 2010; Vergani, 2014).…”