Municipal size and local democracy: understanding the trade-off between participation and contestation in Latin America

Municipal size affects local democracy through two mechanisms - participation and contestation. By drawing on national-level theories of democracy, this article identifies a necessary tradeoff: decreasing municipal size maximises the participatory dimension of local democracy but reduces the level o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLocal government studies Vol. 48; no. 5; pp. 951 - 972
Main Authors Kouba, Karel, Dosek, Tomas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.09.2022
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Democracy
Latin America
local democracy
Local elections
Municipal size
Participation
political competition
Regions
Latin America
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Summary:Municipal size affects local democracy through two mechanisms - participation and contestation. By drawing on national-level theories of democracy, this article identifies a necessary tradeoff: decreasing municipal size maximises the participatory dimension of local democracy but reduces the level of contestation, which is similarly crucial for a healthy democracy. Employing multilevel models that simultaneously account for national-level and local-level influences, this proposition is tested using a large dataset of over 9,000 municipalities in 15 Latin American countries with competitive local elections. The evidence supports the operation of such a tradeoff in a regional comparison, and single-country analyses suggest that it is present with varying force in most countries of the region.
ISSN:0300-3930
1743-9388
DOI:10.1080/03003930.2021.2013208