The Economist UK - 16.11.2019

48 Asia The EconomistNovember 16th 2019

2 tionalists since the 1980s, and a fixture of

thebjp’s election manifestos since 1996.

Having won a second five-year term in May

by a landslide, Mr Modi has fulfilled a

string of promises to his Hindu nationalist

base, including splitting Jammu & Kash-

mir, India’s only Muslim-majority state,

into two parts, and stripping it both of its

special status under the constitution and

of statehood.

Will this triumphant end to thebjp’s

long crusade now allow the prime minister

to focus on more pressing issues, such as a

faltering economy? And will it cool the fer-

vour of Hindu extremists enough to soothe

communal relations, which have grown in-

creasingly strained under Mr Modi? Some

Hindu hardliners are already pushing for

more, claiming that other mosques, and

even perhaps the Taj Mahal, the famous

tomb of a Muslim emperor and his wife, are

built atop ancient temples. Happily, the

likelihood of mobilising a large chunk of

Hindu opinion in support of a fresh agita-

tion is probably limited. The campaign to

demolish and replace the Babri Masjid be-

gan 70 years ago with the surreptitious

planting of a Hindu idol in 1949. The ensu-

ing lifetime of strife is not a price that many

Indians will be willing to pay again. 7

T

he electionin July for the upper house

of Japan’s parliament was “remarkably

unfair”, Kazuhiko Tomita, a judge on the

northerly island of Hokkaido, ruled in Oc-

tober. Worse, it was held in a “state of un-

constitutionality”. He was referring to Ja-

pan’s severe malapportionment—the

division of the country into legislative dis-

tricts with widely differing populations.

In Miyagi there are almost 976,000 reg-

istered voters for every member the prefec-

ture sends to the upper house of the Diet, or

parliament. In Fukui prefecture, the equiv-

alent figure is below 326,000. That means,

in effect, that voters in Fukui get three

times more representation in the upper

house than their counterparts in Miyagi.

The discrepancies in the lower house are

not quite as bad. The most populous dis-

trict, in Tokyo, has only twice the voters of

the least populous, in Tottori, a largely ru-

ral prefecture on the west coast.

Japan’s constitution is a little woolly on

how districts are to be drawn up. It gives the

authority to do so to the Diet itself, but

states, “All of the people are equal under the

law” and “There shall be no discrimination

because of race, creed, sex, social status,

family origin, education, property or in-

come.” Campaigning lawyers have repeat-

edly used these clauses to challenge mal-

apportionment in the courts. Hidetoshi

Masunaga leads the group that brought the

case decided last month in Hokkaido. As he

observes, “One man, 0.5 votes” is not exact-

ly democratic.

The courts have repeatedly ruled

against malapportionment, although they

typically decline to throw out the results of

elections held with skewed maps. Instead,

judges have established a principle that the

biggest constituency in the lower house

should have no more than double the vot-

ers of the smallest. The maximum discrep-

ancy in the upper house is 3:1.

The Diet has repeatedly adjusted dis-

trict boundaries in an attempt to conform

to this rule. But lawmakers have been re-

luctant to abandon the idea that there

should be at least one member in both

houses from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures.

Apportionment is a problem in many

democracies. America’s constitution allots

two senators to each state, regardless of

population, meaning that Wyoming has a

senator for every 290,000 residents, versus

one for every 20m Californians. In Malay-

sia, the biggest district in parliamentary

elections last year had eight times the pop-

ulation of the smallest. Moreover, the dif-

ference in Japan has narrowed markedly

since the courts began to weigh in. The ra-

tio between upper-house districts used to

be as much as 6:1, says Taku Sugawara of the

University of Tokyo.

But in Japan malapportionment is par-

ticularly persistent and severe because of

the country’s unusual demography. Big cit-

ies such as Tokyo continue to grow, even as

the population as a whole shrinks. Some

rural prefectures are losing people at an in-

creasing rate.

The disparities in population will again

exceed the limits set by the courts by the

time the next election comes around, says

Kenneth McElwain of the University of To-

kyo. Hokkaido’s population is projected to

shrink by a third in the next two decades.

Three-quarters of its municipalities could

disappear in the coming years, according

to the Japan Policy Council, a think-tank. It

is huge, accounting for 20% of Japan’s terri-

tory, but only 4% of its population. Its mps

will end up representing ever larger dis-

tricts. That will mean less contact with vot-

ers, who will already be feeling left behind

by demographic change.

Moreover, the rapid shrinking of the ru-

ral population means that each new elec-

toral map quickly becomes biased in favour

of relatively elderly and conservative dis-

tricts in the countryside, at the expense of

big cities. That benefits the ruling Liberal

Democratic Party, which is stronger in rural

areas than urban ones. It dominates the

Diet, and its mps have naturally been reluc-

tant to embrace wholesale electoral re-

form. That, says Mr Masunaga, is why he

and his colleagues have turned instead to

the courts. The next step, says Noriyuki

Okuyama, a lawyer involved in the Hokkai-

do suit, is to take their case to the Supreme

Court. “One person, one vote is a prerequi-

site for democracy,” he insists. 7

TOKYO

Demography helps keep the legislative map favourable to the ruling party

Electoral districts in Japan

Self-reinforcing bias

The grass is greener for rural voters