[EL] Gerrymandering in other countries

[David Lublin]

Hi Ed,

Not to advertise but I have chapter in my book, *Minority Rules*, on
gerrymandering and minorities/ethnic parties around the world. I don't know
whether you intend to include malapportionment or not but here are a few
cases in both SMD and PR systems:

Canada has had malapportionment that tends to benefit smaller provinces, or
most except Ontario, Alberta and possibly BC. Harper's change to the
distribution rules made things much fairer. However, smaller provinces are
still somewhat overrepresented. Rural areas are overrepresented in most
provinces with vast seats in the northern part tending to have far fewer
people, which may help indigenous peoples.

Australia has similar malapportionment within some states (I think, Western
Australia) but I'd double check, though not at the federal level. Both
Canada and Australia do not have gerrymandering in the sense of direct
manipulation of district lines.

Singapore has two types of gerrymandering. First, they are very careful to
arrange where people live--the government controls most housing--to avoid
too high concentrations of Malay/Indian minorities anywhere. Second, after
each election, the government rearranges the lines to dismember opposition
seats or weaken them. Not a free democracy, however.


Quite a few countries with PR engage in intentional malapportionment. I
don't know if you mean to include these cases:

In Spain, there is a bias toward rural areas in the central government as
well as in many autonomous communities. At the national level, each
province gets 2 seats (more complex rules for the Canaries and the
Ceuta/Melilla get on apiece) and the remaining are distributed without
regard to the first two, so provinces with large cities, like Madrid and
Barcelona in particular, are underrepresented.

In Catalonia, the non-Barcelona provinces are overrepresented in the
legislature. This aids nationalist parties and created a wrong-winner
situation once. If they hold elections now, it is possible to get a
separatist majority in the legislature without majority support. In the
last elections, they fell just short of a majority but gained a majority
(Junts pel Si + CUP).

In the Basque Country, each province has an equal number of seats, which
works against the Basque nationalists, as this severely overrepresents
Alava as the expense of the other two.

In Brazil, the military regime's creation of new states and the minimum
number of seats for each of the states, and the maximum placed on Sao
Paulo, was seen as intentional to benefit the right. I think something
similar may have occurred in terms of raising the minimum number of seats
per province in Argentina.

Malapportionment used to be a problem in the UK but has been mostly
eliminated. Before the Troubles, the NI Parliament was gerrymandered
against the Catholic Nationalists and for the Protestant Unionists.

Hope this helps,
David



On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Edward Still <still at votelaw.com> wrote:

> A friend asked me "wondering about gerrymandering  -- is it a significant
> problem in other countries, particularly western democracies?"
>
> Anyone have a good answer to this?
>
>
> Edward Still
> Edward Still Law Firm LLC
> 429 Green Springs Hwy, STE 161-304
> Birmingham AL 35209
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> still at votelaw.com
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-- 
David Lublin
Professor of Government
School of Public Affairs
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20016
http://davidlublin.com/
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