Populism and the personalization of politics appears to be threatening the existence of democracy as we know it all over the world. It is now more important than ever to understand the history of this form of regime: why it has thrives and fails. But, existing studies are limited by their focus on a few large and predominately rich states. This book takes the opposite approach: it investigates how politics is practiced in the smallest states wherehyper-personalization has always been a ubiquitous feature of political life. It optimistically finds that hyper-personalized democracy can actually persist against all odds, but also cautions that political practicesin small states are often markedly different to larger states.

Democracy in Small States: Persisting Against All Odds (Oxford Studies in Democratization)

Corbett, Jack

Veenendaal, Wouter

Legal Theory & Systems

Oxford University Press

Population and Politics: The Impact of Scale

Product Description Every country, every subnational government, and every district has a designated population, and this has a bearing on politics in ways most citizens and policymakers are barely aware of. Population and Politics provides a comprehensive evaluation of the political implications stemming from the size of a political unit – on social cohesion, the number of representatives, overall representativeness, particularism ('pork'), citizen engagement and participation, political trust, electoral contestation, leadership succession, professionalism in government, power concentration in the central apparatus of the state, government intervention, civil conflict, and overall political power. A multimethod approach combines field research in small states and islands with cross-country and within-country data analysis. Population and Politics will be of interest to academics, policymakers, and anyone concerned with decentralization and multilevel governance. Review The size of a polity is crucial to its politics. Political scientists have known this since Plato, but the impact of population size is complex because affects many political outcomes. Gerring and Veenendaal offer the authoritative account of the impact of scale by bringing together the results and ideas of a large and diverse literature with new empirical evidence on thirteen important aspects of how democracy thrives in small and large political communities. Søren Serritzlew, Aarhus UniversityScale matters in profound ways for politics. That is the conclusion of this bold, wide-ranging, data rich, and strikingly original book. The book shows empirically the extent to which size matters for dozens of outcomes ranging from cabinet size to extent of steel production. In discovering various scale effects, the authors provide new data for answering the fundamental question that intrigued the classical theorists: What is the optimal size for political communities? James Mahoney, Northwestern University'This book will shake up what you think you know about governance. Scale effects – which we rarely reflect on – turn out to be pervasive in their effects on political institutions. Bigger states are more powerful, but are they better governed? Better places to live? Gerring and Veenendaal confront these questions and more and deliver powerful findings on how polity size shapes politics.' Jack A. Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr Professor of Public Policy and Eminent Scholar, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University Book Description Analyzes scale effects across a range of political dimensions, encompassing different political levels using a multi-method approach. About the Author John Gerring is Professor of Government at University of Texas at Austin. He is co-editor of Strategies for Social Inquiry, a book series at Cambridge University Press, and serves as co-PI of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the Global Leadership Project (GLP).Wouter Veenendaal is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. He is the author of Politics and Democracy in Microstates (2014) and Democracy in Small States (2018).

Politics & Social Sciences

Gerring, John

Politics & Government

Cambridge University Press

Every country, every subnational government, and every district has a designated population, and this has a bearing on politics in ways most citizens and policymakers are barely aware of. Population and Politics provides a comprehensive evaluation of the political implications stemming from the size of a political unit - on social cohesion, the number of representatives, overall representativeness, particularism ('pork'), citizen engagement and participation, political trust, electoral contestation, leadership succession, professionalism in government, power concentration in the central apparatus of the state, government intervention, civil conflict, and overall political power. A multimethod approach combines field research in small states and islands with cross-country and within-country data analysis. Population and Politics will be of interest to academics, policymakers, and anyone concerned with decentralization and multilevel governance.

Why are small states statistically more likely to have a democratic political system? By addressing this question from a qualitative and comparative methodological angle, this book analyses the effects of a small population size on political competition and participation. By comparing the four microstates of San Marino (Europe), St. Kitts and Nevis (Caribbean), Seychelles (Africa), and Palau (Oceania), it provides fresh and stimulating insight, concluding that the political dynamics of microstates are not as democratic as commonly believed. Instead, it is found in all four cases that smallness results in personalistic politics, dominance of the political executive, patron-client relations between citizens and politicians, and the circumvention of formal political institutions. In addition, the book suggests that the study of formal institutions provides an incomplete image of microstate democracy and that informal characteristics of politics in microstates also need to be explored in order to better explain the influence of smallness on democracy. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, democratization, regional and decentralization studies and comparative politics.

Politics and Democracy in Microstates (Democratization and Autocratization Studies)

Routledge

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Veenendaal, Wouter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Veenendaal, Wouter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Veenendaal, Wouter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Democracy in Small States: Persisting Against All Odds (Oxford Studies in Democratization)

Population and Politics: The Impact of Scale

Population and Politics: The Impact of Scale

Politics and Democracy in Microstates (Democratization and Autocratization Studies)

Politics and Democracy in Microstates (Democratization and Autocratization Studies)