Item Details
Skip Navigation Links
   ActiveUsers:1114Hits:21176049Skip Navigation Links
Show My Basket
Contact Us
IDSA Web Site
Ask Us
Today's News
HelpExpand Help
Advanced search

In Basket
  Journal Article   Journal Article
 

ID110528
Title ProperJurisdiction size and local democracy
Other Title Informationevidence on internal political efficacy from large-scale municipal reform
LanguageENG
AuthorLassen, David Dreyer ;  Serritzlew, Soren
Publication2011.
Summary / Abstract (Note)Optimal jurisdiction size is a cornerstone of government design. A strong tradition in political thought argues that democracy thrives in smaller jurisdictions, but existing studies of the effects of jurisdiction size, mostly cross-sectional in nature, yield ambiguous results due to sorting effects and problems of endogeneity. We focus on internal political efficacy, a psychological condition that many see as necessary for high-quality participatory democracy. We identify a quasiexperiment, a large-scale municipal reform in Denmark, which allows us to estimate a causal effect of jurisdiction size on internal political efficacy. The reform, affecting some municipalities, but not all, was implemented by the central government, and resulted in exogenous, and substantial, changes in municipal population size. Based on survey data collected before and after the reform, we find, using various difference-in-difference and matching estimators, that jurisdiction size has a causal and sizeable detrimental effect on citizens' internal political efficacy.
`In' analytical NoteAmerican Political Science Review Vol. 105, No. 2; May 2011: p. 238-258
Journal SourceAmerican Political Science Review Vol. 105, No. 2; May 2011: p. 238-258
Key WordsJurisdiction ;  Local Democracy ;  Internal Political Efficacy ;  Large - Scale Municipal Reform