ABSTRACT
As democratic forms of government have become more widely deployed over the last one hundred or so years, the size of governments have also increased dramatically. ‘Size’ here refers not only to the number of people that fall under governments’ jurisdiction, but also to the sheer range of responsibilities and problems that we as citizens now expect our governments to deal with. Of course, there are reasons to concentrate power centrally and to disperse it to individual or grassroots levels. However, a fundamental question remains – at what level should power rest for various governmental functions? Determining what and where the ‘public interest’ is best established and represented between the local and central tiers continues as a tension in democratic governance (Dahl, 1982; Fagence, 1977; Healey, 1997a: 296–7; Held, 1987: 268–83; Howe, 1994; Meyerson and Banfield, 1955; Mill, 1948/1861).
