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This article takes over, from an empirical perspective, one of the classic concerns of normative theories of democracy: political community size and citizen participation. Although it focuses on voter turnout, this paper makes a simple question: why and how the political body size can influence the political behaviour of its residents. For this purpose, we examine, from an aggregate approach, the relationship between "size" and turnout in different types of elections in Andalusia, in the period 1999-2011. Our ecological analysis of participation, by using multi-regression techniques, shows that population size is the main "civic" characteristic of localities. However, other characteristics of local contexts, such as income and subsidized agrarian population, are positively related to participation. Our results suggest that individual theories of voting behaviour should also take into account the contextual factor when offering their conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]