Country Size and State Performance: How Size Affects Politics, Administration and Governance Marlene Jugl
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Country Size and State Performance: How Size Affects Politics, Administration and Governance Marlene Jugl Dissertation submitted to the Hertie School of Governance in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor rerum politicarum (Dr. rer. pol.) in the Doctoral Programme in Governance Berlin, 2019 First advisor Prof. Dr. Kai Wegrich Hertie School of Governance Second advisor Prof. Ellen M. Immergut, PhD European University Institute Summary This dissertation addresses the question how the size of a country affects the performance of its political and administrative system. It advances the literature on small states by explicitly theorizing large states and empirically comparing countries of different sizes. Country size, operationalized as population size, is expected to be related to three clusters of country characteristics: First, a perception of vulnerability in small states vs. a lack of awareness for external threats in large states; second, social homogeneity and proximity in small states vs. heterogeneity and distance in large states; third, institutional centralization and concentration of power in small states vs. specialization and de-centralization in large states. The effect of country size and these three characteristic features on different aspects of procedural state performance is analyzed in three empirical chapters. Chapter 2 develops the argument that small country size favors the stability of political regimes, namely authoritarian monarchies. It iterates between theoretical reflections and the empirical analysis of different data: statistical data on population size and monarchic regime durability between 1946 and 2008; two most similar comparative cases of monarchic regimes, Egypt and Jordan; and supposedly deviant cases. Chapter 3 investigates the effect of population size on the effectiveness of national bureaucracies and expects a trade- off between economies and diseconomies of scale. It estimates multivariate OLS regression models and within-between random effects models for more than 150 countries. The analysis supports the hypothesized inverse U-shaped relation and finds that administrative effectiveness is highest, ceteris paribus, at medium levels of population size. Chapter 4 consists of a comparative case study of Germany and Luxembourg and investigates whether country size affected how the two states prepared for and reacted to the 2015 migration crisis. The analysis builds on newspaper articles and 20 expert interviews. It shows that Luxembourg’s small size favored identities and structures that allowed early crisis recognition and preparation as well as swift communication and coordination, whereas Germany’s large size led to attention biases that inhibited a quick reaction. In sum, the findings show that country size affects several aspects of state performance, which has important normative and practical implications. Acknowledgements The past four years have been an extremely rewarding time. I am grateful for the possibility to engage in unknown depth with a topic of my choice, which still fascinates me today. I am also grateful for the support and encouragement I have received during this time. I would like to thank my first supervisor, Kai Wegrich, for believing in me and my project, for teaching me to aim high, and for leaving me room to grow as a scholar. I thank my second supervisor, Ellen Immergut, for her continued interest in my project and for enabling my productive stay at the European University Institute. I thank my third supervisor, Mark Kayser, for his concise feedback, especially on chapter 3, and for having always lent a sympathetic ear since my very first interview at Hertie. This dissertation has also benefitted from many colleagues, who commented on my work and encouraged me over the course of this project. At the Hertie School, I thank Luciana Cingolani, Christian Freudlsperger and Lukas Graf as well as the OML PhD discussion group. I am especially grateful to my public- administration colleagues and friends Jessica Breaugh and Luis Everdy Mejía for their scholarly and personal support. Moreover, I thank Jack Corbett, Wouter Veenendaal, Martin Weinrich and uncountable workshop and conference participants for their valuable comments. Furthermore, I thankfully acknowledge the time and openness of all interview partners, which has immensely enriched the work on chapter 5. I appreciate the Hertie School’s financial support through a three-year scholarship and several travel funds, which allowed me to enjoy and benefit from some of the best features of academic life: conferences, fieldwork and a research stay. The past four years would not have been as pleasant without those at the Hertie School who do not only administer money and implement rules, but are always willing to help: Christiane Kasack, Verena Neumann and Sabine Höft. Finally, I would like to thank those without whom I would not have had the strength and calm to begin and finish this dissertation. I thank my parents for teaching me to believe in myself, to go with my gut and mind a healthy work-life balance. I thank my sister for being a true lifetime friend and for reminding me that there is a world outside academia. I thank Robin for being my greatest fan and my greatest critic, for having pushed me to apply to the Hertie School and for the wonderful years we spent together in Berlin. Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE Preamble .................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Country size in political science and governance research: Setting the agenda. 1 1.2 Small-state research: State of the art ........................................................................ 4 1.2.1 Definitions of country size and smallness ......................................................... 4 1.2.2 Smallness and democracy .................................................................................... 6 1.2.3 Smallness and political institutions ................................................................... 8 1.2.4 Smallness and public administration ................................................................ 9 1.3 The approach of this dissertation ............................................................................. 11 1.3.1 Conceptualizing country size .............................................................................. 11 1.3.2 Conceptualizing state performance .................................................................. 15 1.3.3 Research design and outline of the chapters ................................................... 16 CHAPTER TWO Country size and the survival of authoritarian monarchies: Developing a new argument ............................................................................................. 21 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 21 2.2 The population of cases: Monarchic regimes after World War Two ................ 23 2.3.1 Key characteristics of small and large states .................................................. 26 2.3.2 Size effects on legitimation ............................................................................... 28 2.3.3 Size effects on repression ................................................................................... 28 2.3.4 Size effects on co-optation ................................................................................ 29 2.4 Historical illustration: Monarchy in Egypt and Jordan in the 1950s ................ 30 2.4.1 Egypt: A large kingdom with a plethora of opposition ................................. 30 2.4.2 Jordan: A small and manageable kingdom ..................................................... 33 2.5 Deviant cases and refined argument ....................................................................... 37 2.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER THREE Finding the golden mean: Country size and the performance of national bureaucracies ..................................................................................................... 41 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 41 3.2 The theoretical trade-off between economies and diseconomies of scale ....... 43 3.2.1 Economies of scale ............................................................................................... 43 3.2.2 Diseconomies of scale ......................................................................................... 45 3.2.3 The trade-off ......................................................................................................... 47 3.3 Data and methods ....................................................................................................... 48 3.3.1 Measurement and data........................................................................................ 48 3.3.2 Modeling strategy and sample selection .......................................................... 51 3.3 Results .......................................................................................................................... 53 3.4 Robustness checks ..................................................................................................... 58 3.5 Discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................