Small Polities are Better Polities

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In the WaPo, Amber Phillips reports on a survey of trust in government.

Gallup found that an average of 64 percent of residents in the smallest 10 states have confidence in their state government, a fairly high number. Again, the reason may be that in smaller states people live similarly and thus have similar wants and needs the government can more easily address.

Thanks to a reader for the pointer.

The next time someone tells you that we need to be more like Denmark, you should say, “Break up the big states!”

One of my longstanding beliefs is that smaller polities are better polities. Imagine that we broke up any state with a population larger than ten million, and suppose that we then gave states full domestic policy autonomy. The federal government would be tasked with providing for the common defense, but do not with promoting the general welfare.

17 thoughts on “Small Polities are Better Polities”

  1. I assume that you also want for these smaller-than-CA/TX states free trade, travel, and perhaps a uniform commercial code (or some way of allowing vendors to opt into a particular jurisdiction for consumer/class-action disputes). Or not?

  2. Interestingly, looking at the data it seems like size and diversity is a better explanation then just size. It seems like the most homoginous small states are the ones that have the most trust in government. Sorry Rhodes Island, New Jersey, & Maryland.

  3. Here’s the whole list.

    Unimpressive. I ran a regression of confidence vs. population and if you remove the outlier of Illinois (which is uniquely awful and by itself at the bottom of the pack), R-squared is only 0.030, and p is 0.23. That’s nothing. There is no correlation.

    Doing the same thing for ‘not confident’, R-squared is only 0.02 and p is 0.30.

    That’s even worse. This is awful reporting on the part of WaPo and Gallup.

    Look at some of those ‘least confident’ states.

    #2 Rhode Island. As small as they come, geographically and population-wise.
    #3 Connecticut. Also pretty small.
    #6 is Kansas, #9 is Maine.

    Texas is near the top of trust, with the same confidence numbers as Alaska.

    Meanwhile Florida and California are in the middle, with Washington DC. DC!

  4. Rhode Island is a pretty small state, in population as well as territory. How good is its government? It used to be said that the state was run by the Mafia.

    Would you care to be sued in state court in Mississippi?

    Have you ever met a member of a state legislature?

    Actually, the Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to provide for the “general welfare” (the preamble is not an operative part of the document). It does grant the feds the power to regulate interstate commerce. Do you really want to eliminate that? You might find the views of Prof. Michael Greve of GMU on the virtues and vices of the states enlightening.

    • I think if they meant “regulate anything because everything affects everything” they would have said that. So, yes, I’d like to see us dial down the “regulate interstate commerce” a bit.

      • I didn’t ask if Arnold wanted to “dial down” federal power over interstate commerce. I asked if he wanted to eliminate it, which appears to be what he is suggesting in the post. This approach did not work well under the Articles of Confederation.

          • Unfortunately, Hamilton, Madison, et al. are unavailable to be asked. But the system Arnold seems to be suggesting actually was tried in the 1780s, and the perception that it was a failure was sufficiently widespread that the states ended up replacing it with the Constitution.

            The point is that dividing domestic governance into smaller local units, and reducing the central government’s authority over the smaller local units, presents its own set of problems, and is not a panacea for anything. I am amazed to see someone like Arnold thinking along those lines. It’s the sort of nostrum I expect to hear from the likes of Rick Perry.

          • Exactly how long would it take us to figure out how to do trade after 200 years of experience that trade is good? We would clearly start from where we are. Some institutions could simply change their letterhead. Maybe some enforcements would be more expensive.

            Immigration across state lines? That sounds like a joke. Talk about Federal dys-regulation. At least border states might be allowed to enforce the border! Maybe we can’t have coherent border policy because it is Federalized. We only really know that we don’t have coherent border policy.

            The question is whether the tariffs and inefficiencies we probably don’t need the Feds to eliminate outweigh the problems The Feds create. I’m not sure it is such an easy calculation. I guess it depends on one’s point of view whether you like the package deal. Looking at the EU, we don’t need what we have in order to have common sense trade agreements. But we’d also end up fighting the poison pills of a looser union eventually as they try to grab power.

            Thankfully we don’t fully exercise total economic central planning that the commerce clause apparently would allow. All regulations are allowed if they affect trade, and it has been shown that everything affects trade. Otherwise it would be more obvious that it is actually a difficult question- or maybe not so difficult when your realize we wouldn’t be instituting any tarriffs or any other anachronisms anyway.

          • It is pretty unrealistic to think we wouldn’t solve the economic organization problems instantly.

            We know how to do it now. The Feds only did it because we already knew it was important. That is like claiming we would reinstate slavery.

            You are being a little concern trollish, don’t cha think?

  6. I’d even take “promoting the general welfare” if those words actually meant what those words mean.

  7. “Imagine that we broke up any state with a population larger than ten million…”

    Hard to do. Los Angeles County alone has 12 million people. How are you going to break that up in any sensible way?

    I would oppose Congress admitting new states with fewer than 3 million people. The Senate becomes unwieldy then, and it’s unfair to the remaining big states.

    That said, I generally support your proposal, suitably modified.

  9. Is “small” the variable here?

    The most states with highest confidence tend to be small, but they also have other variables in common

    Low ethnic diversity
    Low inequality
    Low density

    It could be that states that are small tend to be culturally and economically homogeneous. It could be that smaller states have less resources to be controlling and thus citizens have less to squabble about.

  10. It seems to that a couple of the problems that the Presidential candidates are whining about and promising to fix in this election are state issues. The rise of tuition relative to income in public colleges is a state issue. If the colleges spent less they could make tuition free and it seems to me that the more of the money that comes from the other 49 states through the Federal Government the more incentive the state colleges have to raise spending. Similarly with health care, regulation and excessive licensing that might contribute to high price and a lack of competition occur at the state level but much of the money spent on health care comes through the federal Government.

    Smaller states might help with these 2 issues but better alignment be even better.

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