> I think federalism is a good idea because, at the end of the day, I want to be ruled by a government that represents my community, not some abstract mass of people.
What size do you think is the best for a democracy then? 10,000 people? 1000,000? The US is as big as the EU and certainly has a lot more centralized legislation.
So many issues today (taxes, trade, environmental protection, immigration, etc.) involve very large groups of people (if not all people), and so it really makes sense to have a body of representatives from all those people together. Some issues may only affect the local community (however big that is) and so of course the local community can take care of those.
My thought is something roughly the size of a large city state, or small regular state. Or the size of a US state. Or whatever the people of an area decide.
But don't we already have that with city/major councils? Are you arguing that these councils should just be given slightly more influence than they have now?, or that we don't need anything larger than them at all?
>What size do you think is the best for a democracy then? 10,000 people? 1000,000? The US is as big as the EU and certainly has a lot more centralized legislation.
The following is in the context of a representative democracy/republic:
Interesting question, as far as elected representatives and their number of constituents, I certainly support a maximum threshold, in the range of 10's of thousands at most. When groups larger than this are directly represented by single elected officials, it seems to increase the likelihood of the represented feeling removed or effectively excluded from the political process, which results in the sentiment (I suppose it's a leaning toward anti-globalist ideals) towards abstract, large centralized governance we see in many Brexit supporters as well as a portion of the supporters for Donald Trump in my home country the USA.
Interesting notes regarding American law on this topic:
"The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 persons." [1]
The Appointment Act of 1911 and subsequent Permanent Appointment Act of 1929 capped the total number of House congressional representatives at 435 [2], so the degree of seperation between an individual elector and their representative in any given congressional district continues to grow as population increases. This also has an effect on the Electoral College, as it's membership numbers are based on the number of congress persons. Furthermore, I will assume this limit, combined with a growing population will increase the chances of a Presidential Candidate winning election without also winning the national popular vote, as we have seen on multiple occasions in recent decades.
What size do you think is the best for a democracy then? 10,000 people? 1000,000? The US is as big as the EU and certainly has a lot more centralized legislation.
So many issues today (taxes, trade, environmental protection, immigration, etc.) involve very large groups of people (if not all people), and so it really makes sense to have a body of representatives from all those people together. Some issues may only affect the local community (however big that is) and so of course the local community can take care of those.