Not all countries are born equal in population size. With its 1.4bln people, China is more than 1,000,000 times larger than Vatican City and 100,000 times larger than the small Pacific island states of Nauru and Tuvalu. The United States is about 13 times larger than Australia. In her recent book Country Size and Public Administration (Cambridge Elements in Public and Nonprofit Administration) Marlene Jugl (Bocconi University Department of Social and Political Sciences) highlights the important, and yet understudied implications of size for public administration. Large states with larger administrations benefit from specialization but are prone to coordination problems, whereas small states experience advantages and disadvantages linked to multifunctionalism and informal practices. Midsize countries may achieve economies of scale while avoiding diseconomies of excessive size, which potentially allows for highest performance. Using descriptive and causal statistical analyses of worldwide indicators and a qualitative comparison of three countries, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany, Jugl demonstrates the various ways in which size matters for public administrations around the world. Bocconi Knowledge, courtesy of the author, publishes an excerpt from the book.

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