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 University

Scale 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