As a result of their limited population size, politics in small states is characterized by the prevalence of informal relations and the weakness of formal institutional frameworks. Yet despite widespread personalism, the 40 small states in the world with fewer than 1 million inhabitants maintain impressive records of democratic governance and political stability. Small states have so far largely been ignored by comparative political scholarship (Veenendaal and Corbett, 2014), despite their obvious relevance to debates about democratic transition and consolidation, as well as the impact of informal relations on institutional and governance performance. In particular, these cases offer some crucial lessons about the implications of informal networks for democratic accountability. Most small states have copied the democratic institutions of their former colonial power(s), but these formal institutional structures are commonly ignored and circumvented, as most politics is conducted on an informal, face-to-face level.
By examining how informal relations affect democratic governance in small states, this paper aims to highlight the analytical significance of these hitherto understudied cases to scholarship on network governance. The analysis is based on semi-structured elite interviews that were conducted in six small states in various world regions, as well as a newly created index of elite relations in small states. The results indicate that as a consequence of the inherently limited number of capable and skilled professionals in small states, there is a strong overlap between economic, political, and societal elites, undermining the accessibility, transparency, and membership of informal networks (Sørensen and Torfing, 2005). While the prevalence of informal politics therefore weakens democratic accountability and democratic representation, informal networks do contribute significantly to political stability and the absence of political crises or violence in these countries. As a result, the survival of democracy in small states is largely an effect of the prevalence of informal networks.
