Quick thought: I'd say size has a lot to do with
is size... large unmanageable bureaucracies are a sociopaths dream come ture

Agreed. But the argument becomes a bit nuanced then, no?
"Statism doesn't work for very large countries".
And the conclusions (assuming the above is true) would also be a bit more subtle: you could fix large dysfunctional nation states either by breaking them down into more manageable units (c.f. "Bioregionalism"), or by reducing the power of the state. In which case I suspect a break-up into smaller sub-nations is becoming more likely as well.
Imo Statism doesn't work [period], it's just that in the smaller countries it's not as easy to distance the decision makers from the 'normal' citizens.