15 - Other Outcomes

Summary

In Chapter 15, we consider additional outcomes that have attracted scholarly attention and have immense practical importance. We sequentially consider the effects of scale on regimes, social inequality, economic development, and public services, and we find that the causal relationship of scale to these outcomes is unclear. To test these relationships, we conduct original analyses while relying heavily on extant work. This investigation reveals that there is no aggregate relationship between scale and regime type once geographic factors (or more specifically, island status) are accounted for. Our own analysis of the association between scale and social inequality shows no relationship. In similar fashion, there is no cause to believe that size affects economic growth over the long term. When it comes to the provision of public services, the studies that have undertaken to look at this macro-level relationship report inconsistent findings. While we therefore do not find any evidence of a relationship between scale and the outcomes considered in this chapter, this conclusion must be tempered with the caveat that further research on this subject may unearth important patterns.