7 - Participation

Summary

Chapter 7 discusses the relation between scale and various forms of political participation. Why do some political communities elicit higher levels of participation than others? In this chapter, we argue, following a long tradition, that community size has important, and markedly negative, effects on political participation. We begin with a discussion of relevant theory, in which we build on the assumption that political participation is motivated, to some degree, by instrumental rationality. This rationality is affected by a variety of factors, among which are individual power, citizens’ access to relevant policymakers, coordination problems, and social norms, which in turn are affected by the scale of a community. We explore the relationship between scale and participation by looking at work on citizen assemblies, political parties, voting, efficacy, and the results of a recent meta-analysis. Subsequently, we provide our own analyses of voter turnout based on the Multilevel Elections Archive (MLEA) dataset. Virtually all studies corroborate the consensus that participation – including subjective feelings of efficacy – is lower in larger communities, all other things being equal.