| badgenome said: Well, it would seem to follow that the closer your proximity to power, the more accountable that power is to you. At this point, there are entire states which are which don't really matter in national politics because they so reliably elect representatives for one party and always vote a certain way in presidential elections. They are reduced to being one tiny piece of a coalition. As for the party thing, it's rather less poisonous at the state or local level. For example, you still have a lot of state representatives and senators who are conservative Democrats while they are pretty much extinct on the national level because when a Democratic politician wants to get anywhere with the national party, he has to adopt all or at least most of the Democratic orthodoxy. In a lot of ways, the moment a politician steps up to the national level he ceases to represent his state or district and becomes just another cog in his party's machine. Plus, if power is devolved to the state level then there's some momentum to continue rolling things back to the local level. Not the end goal, but definitely a step in the right direction. |
I see. I just see very little correlation between "proximity" and the size of Gov't. I'm sure NYC dwellers love that they are just a subway ride away from city hall... must give them so much influence over city policy.
In fact, it seems to me that some of the most crippling jurisdictions (in the West, at least) are within the cities. In the East, it's a little different... city states in South-East Asia seem to be some of the "freest" places in the world (Hong Kong, Singapore)... but those countries have very little to do with democracy.
I suppose you're right about the "party" having little influence at those lower levels. But local governance has its own issues... namely corruption and the privacy issue. At least with a large central state, you're nothing, in local governance things can get very personal.
