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.

KEYWORDS:

• Local government
• amalgamation
• political participation
• political efficacy
• systematic review
• political alienation

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This division has been characterised in different ways – including Denters et al.’s (2014) ‘Lilliput’ and ‘Brobdingnag’ – however, in this paper I use the small-is-beautiful/large-is-lively nomenclature coined by Kelleher and Lowery (2004).

2. This assumption is countered by small-is-beautiful proponents, who instead believe that the heterogeneity of larger municipalities should be detrimental for participation as it dissolves the social-psychological bonds that foster civic norms in smaller municipalities (Oliver 2000; Verba and Nie 1972).

3. This was applied broadly to include sub-national tiers of governance at the local level. Two articles (Finifter and Abramson 1975; Vetter 2002), which appeared in the database searches, were excluded from this review as their independent variables related to community size/type, rather than municipality size.

4. Adding Abelson (1981), as well as four articles identified in van Houwelingen’s (2017) meta-analysis (Holbrook and Weinschenk 2014; Caren 2007; Kelleher and Lowery 2004; Kesselman 1966).

5. As in Kelleher and Lowery (2004), for example.

6. The methods of this paper provide no basis for inferences of causation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joshua McDonnell

Joshua McDonnell is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia. His PhD thesis examines the effect of municipality population size on political efficacy and political participation in an Australian context. The author is a grateful recipient of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, and the University of Western Australia’s Safety Net Top-Up Scholarship.