ABSTRACT
In the course of the continuous transition from small-scale political communities, such as city states and colonial townhalls, to large-scale entities, such as nation states, federal states, and transnational unions, traditional ideals for public participation in politics have been challenged. Dating back to Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers have suggsted that democracies should be limited in terms of the number of people who could participate in a viable democracy, and the geographical size. Plato, for instance, thought that 5,040 was the optimal number of citizens, while other, later thinkers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu were more concerned about the distance from people’s homes to the marketplace, the agora, where public deliberation could take place. The argument was that citizens should live close to the agora, where they would have the oppurtiny to listen and speak their mind (Dahl, 1973).
