Mallaportionment for Gerrymandering: The Case of Malaysia

• In Event: Democracy and Autocracy in Southeast Asia: Challenges and Innovations

Abstract

Gerrymandering and malapportionment both undermine fair representation and involve electoral district boundaries. However, existing research has treated these phenomena separately, leading to disconnected bodies of literature. This paper aims to demonstrate that malapportionment can be an essential component of gerrymandering strategies, particularly when the ruling elites can control apportionment. In addition to conventional gerrymandering tactics of cracking and packing, the ruling party can employ a "self-crack" approach, adjusting district boundaries to increase their own seats without reducing the total number of opposition seats in a given region, such as the state or province. We illustrate this alternative strategy using the case of Malaysia, a long-lasting electoral authoritarian regime that endured from the early 1970s to 2018. By comparing the actual districting plan with counterfactual electoral districts simulated through Sequential Monte Carlo redistricting simulation, we identify significant ethnic gerrymandering against the minority Chinese Malaysians, in which self-cracking was one of the strategies adopted by the majority Malay-dominated ruling coalition.

Authors

• Sho Miyazaki, Stanford University

• Yuko Kasuya, Keio University

• Chin-Huat Wong, Sunway University