Dr. Elinor Ostrom

She has been quoted as stating that small to medium sized cities were more effective in monitoring the performance of their own officials so they could figure out what was going on and correct it. 

Citizens who were dissatisfied with services could exit; vote with their feet. She recommends that small units look for ways to contract together for services. Dr. Ostrom emphasizes that the important thing about small units is that if it doesn’t work, you can exit. If you have only big units, how do you exit?

Dr. Ostrom conducted studies of police departments over a period of 15 years. She never found a single instance of a large, centralized police department outperforming smaller departments, serving similar neighborhoods...She believes that the rules we use to govern need to fit the social or ecological area or field that they are supposed to control. She said, “Having one kind of rule that will work everywhere is a ridiculous kind of thinking”