Legislative malapportionment in Asia

Legislative malapportionment refers to the disparity in the number of registered voters across districts. This is an aspect of the electoral system that concerns not only democracies but also autocracies with regularly held elections. In this regard, this study is not about making democracies more inclusive, but about making an institution associated with democratic politics more inclusive in both democratic and authoritarian regimes in Asia. Malapportionment is a common problem in many legislative elections. If a country uses an electoral formula with a single nationwide district, there is no malapportionment; in this instance, the country has a perfectly apportioned electoral system. By contrast, in a malapportioned system, the votes of some citizens residing in certain geographic areas carry more weight than the votes of citizens in other areas within the same country. Among the world’s electoral systems, only a few nations (e.g., Israel, Namibia, and Sierra Leone) have a single nationwide constituency, and most countries that delimit their constituencies have some degree of malapportionment.