Scale, Community, and the Design of Subnational Jurisdictions: A Postfunctionalist Theory

This paper theorizes that jurisdictional design expresses a choice between two contrasting approaches to government. An instrumentalist approach conceives government as responding to economies of scope and scale. Its purpose is to provide a given basket of public goods at the lowest possible cost to every individual across the country. The ideal is a standardized set up with jurisdictions of similar population and area. The alternative is a community design which builds on existing communities without regard for their population or territorial size. Jurisdictional design is responsive to the longue-durée pressures of geo-history. The outcome is a differentiated set up with jurisdictions that vary widely in population and area. Large, populous regions exist alongside small, less populated regions. We find that scale and community are about equally prominent in shaping a country’s overall jurisdictional design, but they have different antecedents having to do with regime change, democracy, government ideology, and the presence of distinctive regions.