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by benmmurphy 593 days ago
In Australia the seats in the upper house of Parliament are strictly divided between the States with each receiving 12 seats regardless of their relative populations (two territories which are not proper states also receive 2 seats each). I suspect some other countries may have a similar federal model where there is some kind of barrier to stop larger states from being predatory towards smaller states. If you check wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism) you can see some other countries like Argentina have a similar model to Australia. I think in Australia there was probably similar historical reasons for the Senate as the Electoral College in the USA. The colonies in Australia were self-governing and then decided to create a central government and the Senate was a way to give the smaller colonies confidence they wouldn't be taken advantage of in the future.