Countries with multiple capitals

[josealberto4444]

Reviewing the Sri Lanka capital problem, I saw that there are similar problems with Bolivia and Malaysia. I'm not sure about what we should do in those cases, but this is a possible solution:

Bolivia
Capital
Sucre, La Paz

While Sucre is the official and judicial capital, La Paz is the executive and legislative capital.

Malaysia
Capital
Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya

While Kuala Lumpur is the official, legislative and executive capital, Putrajaya is the judicial and planned capital.

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However, it has the inconvenient of adding more capitals to the capital field when they are not even the official capital. Maybe it's enough to just add/update the capital info, which is, in my opinion, necessary for both countries.

Bolivia
Capital
Sucre

While Sucre is the official and judicial capital, La Paz is the executive and legislative capital.

Malaysia
Capital
Kuala Lumpur

While Kuala Lumpur is the official, legislative and executive capital, Putrajaya is the judicial and planned capital.

[aplaice]

Thanks for bringing this up! I don't have time for a full analysis (now or in the near future), but it's a tricky and annoying issue. Some chaotic thoughts (in case they're of any use, of which I have some doubt :)):

I don't understand why for instance for the Netherlands, Wikipedia (and Britannica, which Wikipedia now seems to be following in this respect) has The Hague as just "the seat of government", but for the three countries you list, it lists both cities as capitals. (I have little understanding of the situation in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, but AFAIU the situations in Bolivia and the Netherlands are analogous?)

Looking deeper into Malaysia, some Malaysian government websites describe(d) Putrajaya as a capital. OTOH the constitution unambiguously lists Kuala Lumpur as the capital (and it does mention the Federal Territory of Putrajaya elsewhere, so I don't think it's simply an old version of the constitution). OTOTOH Wikipedia has the implicit category of "constitutional capital", suggesting that there can be capitals that are not constitutionally mandated.

(For comparison, Bern is not the constitutional capital of Switzerland, as Switzerland doesn't have a constitutional capital at all. This is a slightly different situation, since Switzerland doesn't really have any "alternatives" for the capital, but it does show that we do sometimes use other criteria when determining the capital. The question is whether the approximate algorithm is if defined(constitutional_capital); then capital=constitution_capital; else capital=seat_of_... or capital+=constitutional_capital; capital==seat_of_.... Obviously, this is not an exact science — what also matters is what local people actually think, what media treat as the real capital etc.) Edit: I'm an idiot, we already explicitly address the issue of constitutional capitals in CONTRIBUTING.md...

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I'm not very comfortable arbitrarily deviating from Wikipedia. However, I'm also not happy having excessively many capitals (especially when they might not really be capitals), since it makes learning far more difficult (ideally, when possible, cards should have a single, simple answer, not a list). :/

[josealberto4444]

I don't really know about The Hague, but, for example, I know some people from Ivory Coast that mention Abidjan as the capital (although I never asked them explicitly which is the capital). The situation can get tricky easily if we don't specify a clear and thorough algorithm. =(

I'll try to think a bit more about this.

[aplaice]

I've realised that I'm an idiot and much of what I wrote above is wrong. (I shouldn't write things in a hurry without thinking it through, fully...)

We already address the issue of multiple capitals in CONTRIBUTING.md, to some extent:

If the first capital is followed by a qualifier such as "official", "constitutional", "de jure", "claimed", or "political", it must be used alone in the Capital field. The Capital info field must then be used to detail the status and/or role of every capital - e.g. While Dodoma is the official capital, Dar es Salaam is the de facto seat of government.

Bolivia is covered by this rule, so we wouldn't need to add La Paz in the Capital field. Côte d'Ivoire also is covered.

AFAICT Malaysia and Sri Lanka currently aren't. I'd argue that it might be correct to add "constitutional" to Kuala Lumpur, on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure — when I have time I'll look into this deeper, open up a discussion on the Malaysia talk page and optionally add the qualifier. (I have no idea about Sri Lanka.)

[josealberto4444]

You're not an idiot at all. <3 It's just difficult to remember everything. I ask a lot of things already discussed or addressed. =P Maybe we should do an Anki deck of things related to AUG. =D

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About this topic in particular, I agree that, in the case of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur is the constitutional capital with great probability, but I also thing that it is probably also the case for Kotte and Sri Lanka (otherwise it wouldn't be mentioned at all). Wikipedia does not say it, so that would be the main difference… for now. XP

[axelboc]

The page of Putrajaya states that "Kuala Lumpur remains as Malaysia's national capital city per the constitution". To me, this sounds like Putrajaya is not planned to steal the title of official capital from Kuala Lumpur. It's just an administrative centre -- worth mentioning in the Capital info field, but not worth listing in the Capital field.

We can't add "executive" to the list of qualifiers in the guidelines, as this would make Pretoria the capital of South Africa, which is wrong. Perhaps, we could instead be a bit more specific and say that if one of the capitals is the seat of the executive branch and of one other branch (legislative or judicial) then this capital can be listed on its own in the Capital field.

This guideline would lead to having Colombo as the capital of Sri Lanka, and ensure we can keep Kuala Lumpur as the capital of Malaysia, and all three capitals for South Africa. Not sure if it would impact other notes, though...

[josealberto4444]

Well, I'm not sure if I want to mention Colombo as the capital of Sri Lanka. Probably Kotte is the constitutional one (although I have no source for that, it's just a guess).

[josealberto4444]

Well, I'm not sure if I want to mention Colombo as the capital of Sri Lanka. Probably Kotte is the constitutional one (although I have no source for that, it's just a guess).

[axelboc]

It seems to me that Kotte is just where the Parliament building is located, which makes it the legislative capital (some sources also use the term "administrative").

What makes this case unique compared to say Bolivia, South Africa, the Netherlands, etc. is that Kotte is a suburb of Colombo. We're not talking about cities that are geographically distant. To me, this makes all the difference. It's kind of analogous to the case of Kiribati with Tarawa vs South Tarawa. However, there's yet another difference: Tarawa is not a city/urban centre, it's an atoll -- in that sense Tarawa cannot be considered to be a capital at all, which leaves only South Tarawa.

All of this to say that I've never been fond of saying that Kotte is the capital and having to specify that Kotte is a suburb of Colombo, when, from a general knowledge point of view, Colombo should really be front and centre. By saying that Colombo is the capital, we wouldn't be lying, we'd just be simplifying a complex situation to ease learning, which we'd compensate for with the capital info field.

In terms of guidelines, it would be much simpler than what I suggested in my previous comment: we could just say that if a country has two capitals A and B, and B is a suburb of A, then we pick A as the capital and mention B in the capital info field.

[axelboc]

By the way, I'd argue that the situation is the same for Malaysia, since Putrajaya is part of the urban area of Kuala Lumpur.

[aplaice]

Probably Kotte is the constitutional one (although I have no source for that, it's just a guess).

Looking at the constitution of Sri Lanka, there doesn't seem to be an official capital designated as such. They state that the main court is to be seated in Colombo and the rules regarding the use of police forces appear to be different around Colombo, Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte, but no explicit statement that X is the capital of Sri Lanka (unlike in the case of, say, Malaysia).

Hence for Malaysia, I'm pretty confident that we should have only Kuala Lumpur in the capital field (and only mention Putrajaya in the capital info). (Especially given the argument about suburbs, though in this case I'd have the same opinion even without that argument.) Somebody™ should probably try to suggest a change to Wikipedia (to state that Kuala Lumpur is the constitutional capital). (I'll do it when I have more time.) (Now suggested.)

For Sri Lanka, @axelboc your argument about suburbs is quite persuasive — I'll think about it some more.