A historical or current example where democracy successfully, by way of voting, shrunk the size of its government extensively to a more minarchist position.
Will you have some unicorns with that? 
I can get plenty of examples where people actually believed that voting gave them control over limiting their government.
Lets just say it is the best thing government has ever done to legitmize itself and convince the public that THEY are the one’s running the government.
Well i want to use this as a challenge to mincharists. Beleiving they shrunk the government does not mean they did. I want want some type of impirical evidence which proves the government’s size actually decreased. This should be a fairly easy thing to measure with the common economic tools we presently have.
Are you all sure there is no example, not even a freakish one where by accident a government shrunk in size due to voting? I’m talking in aggregate of coarse, not in small isolated examples.
The closest I could think of would be Switzerland. All tax raises and so on must also pass a referendum, and they are usually defeated. It’s by no means minarchy, but the government is constantly subject to approval by the citizens.
Well the Polish noble assembly suceeded in completely stripping the king of his powers. But it did not exactly result in less government. The powers were just transfered onto the nobles, and the lot of the serfs was actually made worse than it had been. That is all I can think of.
But that’s not shrinking the government. It’s not letting the government raise taxes. Have they shrunk it?
Is this a democratic example?
Interesting. Does this actually reverse the growth of the state or only slow it down?
I’m a little hazy and maybe there’s nothing in it, but perhaps check out Estonia?
The percentage of people with political rights was 7% and growing, which is comparable to the proportion with such rights in Athenian democracy. There was plenty of voting going going on, but no it was not a democratic system. The term was aristocratic republic.
I’m not sure if this is precisely what you’re looking for, but it may be relevant? It seems to suggest ‘gross’ decline in post-war government size, though at the same time it seems to concede that pre to post-war, the ‘net’ size of government did indeed increase. Anyway, a fairly interesting read.
Short of revolution, I can’t think of many instances where a government has shrunk.
Any decolonization that may have occured due to democratic vote
This is awfully confusing. If they voted to decolonize. I’m assuming the vote held some power. What entity upheld the power of that vote? It sounds like a state replacing a state. Can you be more specific? It doesn’t sound like a shrinking of the state.
Plenty. Plus some secessions. But this is not a long term thing. It is over in a moment.
One could say “Reagan revolution,” but it didn’t last long, nor did it go far enough.
Ussually there is an anti-establishment movement which is pushing for independence and which flexes its muscles to force the central government to allow a plebiscite to take place.
It is not really something that can be categorised as something stemming from and bearing fruit of political participation.
He cut taxes, but increased spending. He tripled the national debt.
While on this topic, what do you guys postulate would occur say Dr Paul were elected president?