Leopold Kohr

There are some things I like about this book. The topic is interesting and original. State size had not been given much consideration by political theorists when this book was first published. The situation remains much the same today although there's been some related work in federal theory and decentralization (for example Treisman: The architecture of government). The author's enthusiasm for the subject is another positive. You certainly won't be bored by this book.

But good entertainment does not equal good political theory. The author prioritizes breadth before depth. He runs through a whole spectrum of reasons why small nations could be better than large ones. Some of these reasons are very sensible (e.g. that wars would be harmless small-scale affairs and that economic and political power would be less vulnerable to abuse). Others are nonsense (e.g. that science shows that all improvement occurs through division, or that culture can thrive only in small societies, or that a law of diminishing productivity makes small economic units more efficient than large ones). He fails to separate the good arguments from the bad ones. He also has an annoying habit of citing classics just to mention a famous name. Yes, Aristotle and Augustine wrote that small states are better, but that shouldn't mean much to the modern world.

If we look more closely at the arguments where he's onto something, there's one problem which repeats itself. The author is unfamiliar with even the most basic concepts of political theory. For instance, in the "political argument" in chapter 6 he is hopelessly confused on the meaning of democracy. He writes that an international system of small states would be "democratic" because each state can choose to live under anarchy, republic, oligarchy or absolutism as it pleases (p. 121-122). Clearly he doesn't have the faintest idea of how democracy works and what it's good for. This is a big defect because democracy is the primary step for making political power less liable to abuse. Size adjustment may be another step, but democracy must come first. It's absurd to think that people could not be oppressed in small states or that the form of government won't matter as long as a state is small.

In the "administrative argument" in chapter 9 there is similar confusion. The author works hard, but only to conclude that federations shouldn't be unequal in terms of size and that local government is always needed. These very obvious conclusions shouldn't have required any argument at all. In focusing single-mindedly on he misses a much more interesting dilemma which the Federalist Papers addressed: some problems can be resolved by big units, others by small ones. How should power be distributed between them?

In conclusion, the author's arguments don't carry much weight. They are original, but the flipside of originality is confusion and complete detachment from previous work in political theory. There are opportunities to bring the size argument in contact with other works, but the author fails to spot them as he blindly rambles his "too big" mantra. As a result his arguments are stunted and unconvincing. Even so, I don't want to be entirely negative. This book includes a few points worthy of consideration and it's not a bad achievement as a lifetime's work. Original thoughts can be useful even when they don't hit their mark.… (mere)

großartiges Buch Kohr zerlegt Größenwahn und Gigantonomie und propagiert anschaulich das kleine und feine.
Was mir fehlt sind 2 Dinge. Erstens reduziert er Macht immer nur auf regionale Strukturen, das ist zwar gut, aber er beschreibt zu wenig diese Macht vor allem pluralistisch zu halten. Ich wurde vermuten, da auch ein Bezirksregierung die sich vom Kindergarten bis zur Sterbeverordnung, von der Kunst bis zur (D)INorm alles macht, diese trotzdem missbraucht.
Als zweites fehlt mir die funktionale Abhängigkeit. In Kapitel XI Wird es geschehn? schreibt er Nein!, mehr nicht;) das ist ehrlich, aber seine Thesen funktionieren ja, nur nicht immer, ist die Frage wie wir da hin kommen. Wie sollte eine Moral ticken, das 'small is beautiful' gilt.… (mere)