Low-Tech Democracy.

[mindstalk]

how a strong, pre-industrial democracy larger than a city-state might exist

As mentioned, the early US qualifies. The Industrial Revolution is beginning to dawn with more widespread water-driven factories, but the main widespread advances over medieval times are muskets and the printing press plus paper. By 1792 Kentucky is a state, so the country goes 700 miles inland while river steamboats are still highly experimental. Ohio and Mississippi rivers give good water connection to New Orleans, but not to the east coast. Extends over 1200 miles of coast, from Georgia to Maine in a straight line, and over 1400 miles between the far corners of Georgia and Maine.

By comparison Switzerland (which I think got really democratic after Napoleon) is 200 miles across, England about 300 miles tall, Britain about 550 miles. 300 miles wide including Wales or Cornwall, otherwise typically 80-150 miles. Small compared to the US, big compared to a city-state, of course slow to get democratic.

The Iroquois League was interestingly republican in structure too, and covering a lot more land than a city-state, if not more people; not even literacy, here.

Direct democracy... you're not going to get many if any federal initiatives, but I could see changes to the constitution, or even major laws (federal tax or criminal law changes), requiring approval by referendum. Congress writes, the people approve or reject. The US came close in one way -- amendments need to be approved by legislatures or conventions in 3/4 of the states, but if you remove the legislature option then approval gets closer to direct popular approval. Or at least special elections on the issue, rather than just consulting the usual representatives.

I've tried to imagine how the Athenian Delian League, or the Roman Republic, could have stumbled into representative federalism given the ideas they had to work with; haven't had much success. Rome seems more fruitful territory. The Republic was cooked toward plutocracy in the Centuries, but I think tribunal elections were more one man one vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:R...nstitution.svg
Get power to shift even more to the "tribes" and you curb the plutocracy. Then you need some way for the municipia or colonia to get a voice in Rome... this seems the tricky part, given the pseudo-direct democratic structure (consuls propose laws, centuries approve them). Maybe getting to send tribunes who veto laws affecting the home city?

Athens did give more and more power to randomly selected bodies, the Council of 500 and similarly sized juries; it's possible that idea of random sampling could allow scaling to a larger area, vs. the awkward logistics of a popular assembly, which may have been getting problematic for Athens itself -- assembly of maybe 6000 people, vs. total population of maybe 250,000, and adult male citizens of 25-30,000. At this point the juries start looking more representative than "whoever shows up"...