The Icelandic political system is certainly helped by the fact that Iceland is small, because it means that politician are closer to their constituents and ther

The Icelandic political system is certainly helped by the fact that Iceland is small, because it means that politician are closer to their constituents and therefore more likely to act in their interest. Furthermore, organizing effective social movements does not scale very well. Organizing 1000 truly active participants - by which I mean people who are willing to do more than just tweet and write blog posts - is as difficult in Iceland as it is in the US, but in Iceland that already gets you close to 1% of the population, whereas in the US it is basically nothing. The same arguments don't really apply to topics like health care, because the limits of social organization are not as important there.