ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the philosophical and academic debate on the relationship between state size and democratic governance, which traces its development from the Greek philosophers to the present. It describes the arguments in favor of smallness expressed by Plato, Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, after which the Founding Father's opinions against smallness are discussed. Subsequently, the more mixed theories and findings of the postwar literature on foreign policies, economies, socio-political features, and democratic aspects of small states are outlined. The chapter pays attention to sociological characteristics, David Lowenthal observes a tendency towards conservatism and tradition, intimacy, and 'obsessive' autonomism in small jurisdictions. In combination with the rise of nationalism and the concept of the nation-state, this development principally led to the demise of the idea that democracy can only exist in small settings. The chapter ends with an overview of the various theoretical arguments for and against democracy in small states
