Jurisdiction Size, Political Participation, and the Allocation of Resources

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effect of population size on politicalparticipation and allocative efficiency. Increasing populationis generally found to reduce political participation. However,since participation is not evenly spread throughout thepopulation, this will have consequences for allocation.Namely, we argue that increasing population size shifts powerto the rich. We discuss the consequences for the optimal sizeof jurisdictions, the size of government, and the measurementof publicness.