I totally agree with ben86. In general, small rich countries are generally where it's at when it comes to this topic.
I actually have my own personal armchair theory about this. For starters, consider that every single country has a certain number of high-level positions - the number of which does not vary much regardless of country size. Take ambassadors for example. Say you need 200 ambassadors because there are 200 countries in the world. You don't necessarily need more ambassadors just because you are Brazil as opposed to Iceland. And yet because of population size this still means that 1 out of every million Brazilians gets to be an ambassador to a foreign country, compared to maybe 1 in every 1000 Icelanders. And so it goes for any number of positions within a given country. Sure, a large country like Brazil or the U.S. offers many different positions beyond the federal level because of state governments, etc., but it is still doesn't mean they come anywhere close to the lower ratios you find in smaller countries.
(Of course, the larger countries tend to offer much greater economic opportunities, but this is not what we are discussing here.)
Also, I also find that smaller countries tend to have fewer people and areas that seem to be left behind in the broad sense of the term. Perhaps it is easier to deliver a quality education to a smaller, more concentrated population than it is to a huge mass of people over a large area. It is also easier to keep an eye on whether things are being done right. This also appears to be the case when it comes to regional socio-economic development, and small rich countries seem to have much fewer "forsaken" areas than the larger rich countries. Once again, perhaps it is because smaller entities are easier to manage and are not as unwieldy.
Could it be that small really is beautiful?
