Size and Democracy

157 Pages·1973·5.957 MB·English

by  Robert A. Dahl

THE POLITICS OF THE SMALLER EUROPEAN DEMOCRACIES
SIZE AND DEMOCRACY
THE POLITICS OF THE SMALLER EUROPEAN DEMOCRACIES
Editors
Hans Daalder Val R. Lorwin
Robert A. Dahl Stein Rokkan
SIZE AND DEMOCRACY
Robert A. Dahl arid Edward R. Tufte
Stanford University Press, Stanford, California
1973
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
London: Oxford University Press
© 1973 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
isbn 0-8047-0834-7
lc 72-97200
A cknowledgments
We wish to thank all those, and they were numerous, who read
early drafts of our manuscript and provided us with criticism
and suggestions. In particular, we are indebted to our colleagues
in the study of the smaller European democracies: Hans Daalder,
Val Lorwin, and Stein Rokkan. As the reader will discover, the
book has been greatly strengthened by data from the Swedish
Communal Research Program. For their generosity in providing
us with data, and their time, we wish especially to thank Jorgen
Westerstahl and his colleagues.
We are grateful to Nancy Hoskins for her care in typing the
many revisions of the manuscript and to Joseph Verbalis, Alice-
Anne Navin, and Thomas Yunck for research assistance.
A stay at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences in 1967 enabled us to gather and analyze data and write
a first draft. We have received financial support from the Con¬
cilium on International Studies of Yale University, the Center
of International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Christian
Michelsen Institute.
Contents
Introduction 1
1. Size and Democracy in Political Thought 4
2. Dimensions of Size and Democracy 17
3. Complexity and Diversity 30
4. Citizen Participation and Sense of Effectiveness 41
5. Citizen Communication and Control 66
6. Competition, Conflict, and Responsiveness 89
7. Size and System Capacity 110
8. Capacity for Independence and Autonomy 118
Epilogue 137
Index 145
Figures
2.1. Two criteria for the ideal democratic polity 21
2.2. Two criteria cut by indifference curves 24
5.1. Population and parliamentary size in 135 countries, 1970 82
5.2. Predicted and actual parliamentary size in 29 democra¬
cies, 1970 83
6.1. Hypothetical relation between population size and party
competition 101
6.2. Population, population density, percentage of agricultural
employment, and political diversity in 25 Swiss
cantons, 1959-62 104
6.3. Party competition in 35 states of the United States (the
South excluded), 1932-60 107
6.4. Size and the costs of dissent and participation 108
7.1. Foreign trade and population among 124 countries, 1965 114
8.1. Relation between population size and military expendi¬
tures for 113 countries 124
8.2. Relation between population size and military expendi¬
tures for 32 democracies 125
Tables
g. COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY
3.1. Governmental centralization and size in 18 representa¬
tive democracies 38
4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
4.1. Interest in national elections in the United States and
the Netherlands 48
4.2. Interest in political parties in the Netherlands and
Finland 49
4.3. Organizational membership in five countries 49
4.4. Party membership and electoral activity in Norway and
the United States 50
4.5. Political partisanship in Norway, Finland, and the
United States 50
4.6. Citizens’ expectations of treatment by government
officials and the police 52
4.7. Sense of political effectiveness in five countries 53
4.8. Sense of understanding the issues in five countries 54
4.9. Reported impact of governments on daily lives in
five countries 56
4.10. Sense of political effectiveness at national and local
levels in five countries 58
4.11. Reported attempts to influence the government in
five countries 59
4.12. Correlation of political awareness with population size
and density in Swedish communes 64
X Tables
5. CITIZEN COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL
5.1. Population and parliamentary size, 1970 81
5.2. Factors influencing parliamentary size in 29 democracies 83
5.3. Median family income among elected councillors and
voters, Sweden, 1966 85
5.4. Positive attitude toward local taxes among Socialist and
non-Socialist councillors and voters 86
6. COMPETITION, CONFLICT, AND RESPONSIVENESS
6.1. City size and organizational participation in politics,
San Francisco Bay Region 98
6.2. Population size, population density, organizational
participation in politics, and partisan activity in
Swedish communes, 1966 99
6.3. Size, urbanization, and political diversity in the
Netherlands, municipal elections of 1962 102
7. SIZE AND SYSTEM CAPACITY
7.1. Population estimates of some large medieval European
cities 116
8. CAPACITY FOR INDEPENDENCE AND AUTONOMY
8.1. Simple correlation between population (log) and mili¬
tary expenditures as a per cent of GNP (log) for
various groups of nations in 1964 123
8.2. Military expenditures as a per cent of GNP: multiple
regression analysis 126
SIZE AND DEMOCRACY