Measurements of Disproportionality of votes and seats, such as the Gallagher's Least Square Index, are frequently used to compare different electoral systems. But they might be noisy due to geographic malapportionment, which is a different source of disproportionality than electoral systems (although linked to them). On the other hand, this might be useful since it captures all the sources of Disproportionality. If this reasoning is correct (i.e., these indexes really include malapportionment), could we develop indexes that distinguish disproportionality brought by electoral formulas from the disproportionality of seats and votes/population among districs (i.e., malapportionment)?
There's nothing that about the Gallagher Index which precludes you from using it to measure the disproportionality of elections across different countries. I am of the opinion that it is better compared to other measures, such as the Loosemore-Hanby Index, as it is more sensitive to the results of smaller parties. The next best measure is the Loosemore-Hanby Index, known for its simplicity and primarily designed to measure malapportionment. If you're interested in a comparison of different methods, see Taagepara and Grofman 2003 for a comparison of different measurement systems, and Karpov 2008 for an explanation of the major measurments systems.
Thanks, but my question is about malapportionment, i.e., disproportionality INSIDE a country, not about cross-national comparison. Anyway, I have found the answer in Gallagher's paper itself. It does include that sort of disproportionality.
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