The Incredible Shrinking State
David A. Lake|Angela O’Mahony
The effects of economies scale in government, trade openness, preference heterogeneity, and regime type are used to explain why the average size states within international system nearly doubled between 1816 1876 then contracted over 20th century. No one variable appears trend fully. Results suggest that rise territorial during 19th century is product a growing number federal democracies, which tend be large, decline result unitary small. Increasing may have led large whereas economic liberalism allowed democracies prosper
Journal of Conflict Resolution