Democracy and the Size of a Country

Here is an interesting article by Professor Anne Sibert

Are there enough people in Greenland for a whole country?
Greenlanders have been pressing for more autonomy from Denmark, and looking forward to independence. Anne Sibert asks, "Undersized: Could Greenland be the new Iceland? Should it be?" Greenland has 60,000 people, is that enough for a nation-state?
She points out that:
there is little to suggest that small countries grow faster than larger ones.
small country output fluctuates more than larger country output - their production is simply less diversified.
small country consumption fluctuates more than that in larger countries
public goods have an important fixed cost component - so the per capita cost of public services will be higher for a small country.
"...it is also likely that the per capita administrative cost of income taxes is decreasing in country size. As a result, smaller countries tend to rely less on relatively efficient income taxation and more on relatively inefficient taxes, such as customs taxes."
"...a lack of competition in the provision of non-traded goods in small countries can lead to inefficiency."
it's not clear there be enough qualified and talented people to staff of the agencies of a modern state
"...Farrugia (1993) suggests that very small countries may also suffer because of their high degree of interpersonal relations... Farrugia comments that, “Many necessary decisions and actions can be modified, adjusted and sometimes totally neutralised by personal interventions and community pressures. In extreme cases, close personal and family connections lead to nepotism and corruption.”
"...each civil servant is forced to play more roles than he would in a more populous society. Such multi-tasking can be demanding and makes it difficult to build up expertise in a particular area."
and it's not clear that policy-makers in a small remote polity will be able to avoiding becoming insular in their thinking?
There are work-arounds. For example a country can import or hire expertise. Also, "Residents of a country with variable output can smooth their consumption across states of nature by holding a diversified portfolio of home and foreign equity." Perhaps a portfolio could be built with a resource investment fund similar to Alaska's permanent fund.
Sibert knows a small nearby Arctic economy well: Iceland. She and her husband Willem Buiter wrote a paper on Iceland in April 2008, projecting the financial disaster months before it took place. She's now a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Iceland.

Trust

Question We've lost trust. How does a government regain the trust of its citizens after years of corruption? How does an organization regain the trust of the community after it has manipulated the judicial system to uphold unjust laws? How can the public regain trust in government after nasty political lobbying and election manipulation?

Answer Do you trust me? Maybe not you do not know me. The truth is, you can't regain trust. Period. You doubt? Think hard about the times you've been betrayed. Did the villain ever find their way back into your heart? If you're like the many I have asked, the answer is never. Trust can be gained once and lost once. Once lost, it's lost forever.

So how can a government keep trust from the start. It's really quite easy; if you want to be trusted, simply be trustworthy. The pressures will be great to act otherwise, and if you succumb, well, you'll lose trust and you'll never get it back.

Changing governments to gain trust
Trust isn't one-way, of course—trust takes two, it can be between a person and any organization. You can trust a person while distrusting their organization. Conversely you can trust an organization while distrusting its people.

In business, one bad manager rarely destroys trust in the entire company. But several bad managers, armed with policies that clearly treat people as disposable implements, can destroy trust in an entire organization.

In a business, bringing in a new management team that takes clear, visible action may provide a chance of rebuilding trust. For a government it must go further a complete change in its modus operandi is required. These actions will be hampered because citizens have learned to distrust the government as a whole. But at least the new leaders may have a chance to gain one-on-one trust and translate that into the organizational changes needed to build trust throughout.

The Power of the Pamphlet

The precedence for anonymous writing changing people’s view of their circumstances was best illustrated by the document “Common Sense” first published in 1776. This document spread across a continent with over 600,000 copies distributed to a population of 3million. No Internet in 1776 just word of mouths reinforcing the exceptional power of human beings. Sadly we still live in times when open expression can have very vindictive consequences. The document makes very interesting reading.
The opening line “SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.” Seems as true today as it was back in 1776.
John Paine’s writings may have sparked the birth of a new nation but I fear that although the world has aged in years the hope of a society embracing everyone equally is as remote today as it was back in 1776.