How community size transforms political power

There exists a paradox in the literature on community size and political power. According to some scholars, smaller communities facilitate closer connections between citizens and representatives, which empowers these citizens, and therefore leads to more diffuse distributions of power. Other evidence, however, indicates that political leaders within smaller communities, by means of overlapping (social) roles and informality of decision-making, are able to acquire significant shares of power, thereby indicating rather high concentrations of power within smaller communities. This paper aims to bridge these two seemingly contrasting positions by arguing that both employ different conceptualisations of power. Whereas the ‘small is beautiful’ side of the argument focusses on the relative access of people to the decision-making agenda, the advocates against these positive notions of smallness focus on the control over the decision-making itself. As such, smaller communities are hypothesized to have a more open access to the decision-making agenda, but more concentration in making these decisions – and vice-versa for larger communities. This intricate relationship between community size and political power can be explained by social network structures. Smaller communities tend to have compact social networks, which provide close connections and a wealth of ‘weak’ ties. Due to this dense network, many are able to put topics on the agenda, but decision-makers also have significant potential for diffusion, and thus room to exercise their power. In contrast, larger communities have more fractionalized networks with fewer ‘weak’ ties. Direct access to the agenda-setting is difficult for most citizens and might require specific connections, intermediaries or pooling of resources. Moreover, the fractionalized network prevents strong diffusion of power in the decision-making process, resulting in less concentration and the requirement of coalition-building between various factions. To test this argument, this study employs a comparative research design conducted in six municipalities in three European countries. Within each municipality, a social network analysis is conducted to study political power. The analysis is based on a mixed-method approach, consisting of an elite survey and in-depth interviews with local elites.