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While population affects nearly every aspect of politics, its impact has been strikingly under-researched. This book rectifies this omission by examining scale effects across a great variety of political dimensions, encompassing all levels of politics. The authors provide generalizable findings alongside detailed analyses of specific cases.
List of contents
Part I. Framework 1; 1. Scaling the Political World; 2 Approaches; Part II. Scale Effects; 3 Cohesion; 4 Representatives; 5 Representativeness; 6 Particularism; 7. Participation; 8. Contestation; 9. Institutionalized Succession; 10. Professionalism; 11. Concentration; 12, Intervention; 13.Power; 14. Civil Conflict; 15. Other Outcomes; Part III. Conclusions; 16. How Scale Matters.
About the author
John Gerring is Professor of Government at University of Texas at Austin. He is co-editor of Strategies for Social Inquiry, a book series at Cambridge University Press, and serves as co-PI of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the Global Leadership Project (GLP).Wouter Veenendaal is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. He is the author of Politics and Democracy in Microstates (2014) and Democracy in Small States (2018).
Summary
While population affects nearly every aspect of politics, its impact has been strikingly under-researched. This book rectifies this omission by examining scale effects across a great variety of political dimensions, encompassing all levels of politics. The authors provide generalizable findings alongside detailed analyses of specific cases.
Additional text
Scale matters in profound ways for politics. That is the conclusion of this bold, wide-ranging, data rich, and strikingly original book. The book shows empirically the extent to which size matters for dozens of outcomes ranging from cabinet size to extent of steel production. In discovering various scale effects, the authors provide new data for answering the fundamental question that intrigued the classical theorists: What is the optimal size for political communities? James Mahoney, Northwestern University
