Freedom in the World (report)

http://polisci.la.psu.edu/faculty/Casper/caspertufisPAweb.pdf] . Some of these estimates are disputed.Bollen, K.A. (1992) Political Rights and Political Liberties in Nations: An Evaluation of Human Rights Measures, 1950 to 1984. In: Jabine, T.B. and Pierre Claude, R. "Human Rights and Statistics". University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812231082 ] legend|#008000|Free (90) legend|#FF7F2A|Partly Free (60) legend|#000080|Not Free (43)]

[
blue are designated "Electoral Democracies" in Freedom House's 2008 survey [http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2008 Freedom in the World] ]

thumb|330px|Map reflecting the findings of Freedom House's 2007 survey, concerning the state of international civil liberties in 2006.">legend|#70F263|Most Freedom legend|#EC6537|Least Freedom

"Freedom in the World" is a yearly report by US-based Freedom House that attempts to measure the degree of democracy and political freedom in every nation and significant disputed territories around the world, and which produces annual scores representing the levels of political rights and civil liberties in each state and territory, on a scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free). Depending on the ratings, the nations are then classified as "Free", "Partly Free", or "Not Free". It is often used by researchers in order to measure democracy and correlates highly with several other measures of democracy like the Polity data series. [Casper, Gretchen, and Claudiu Tufis. 2003. “Correlation Versus Interchangeability: the Limited Robustness of Empirical Finding on Democracy Using Highly Correlated Data Sets.” Political Analysis 11: 196-203] There is some debate over the neutrality of Freedom House and the methodology used for the FITW report.

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"Freedom in the World 2008"

Detailed descriptions of all nations from the previous year's edition can be found online in [http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2007 "Freedom in the World 2007"] . Please note that while the rankings below are from the current year's edition of Freedom in the World ( [http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw08launch/FIW08Tables.pdf 2008] ), detailed reports for 2008 will not be available online until late spring/early summer.

Each pair of political rights and civil liberties ratings is averaged to determine an overall status of "Free," "Partly Free," or "Not Free." Those whose ratings average 1.0 to 2.5 are considered Free, 3.0 to 5.0 Partly Free, and 5.5 to 7.0 Not Free. The methodology is explained here: [http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2005 Methodology, Freedom house]

An asterisk (*) indicates countries which are "electoral democracies". To qualify as an "electoral democracy", a state must have satisfied the following criteria:

#A competitive, multiparty political system;
#Universal adult suffrage for all citizens (with exceptions for restrictions that states may legitimately place on citizens as sanctions for criminal offenses);
#Regularly contested elections conducted in conditions of ballot secrecy, reasonable ballot security, and in the absence of massive voter fraud that yields results that are unrepresentative of the public will;
#Significant public access of major political parties to the electorate through the media and through generally open political campaigning

Freedom House's term "electoral democracy" differs from "liberal democracy" in that the latter also implies the presence of a substantial array of civil liberties. In the survey, all Free countries qualify as both electoral and liberal democracies. By contrast, some Partly Free countries qualify as electoral, but not liberal, democracies. [http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2005 Methodology, Freedom house]

PR - Political RightsCL - Civil Liberties
* - Electoral democracies per definition stated above

Sub-Saharan Africa

=Central & Eastern Europe & the former Soviet Union=

Related/Disputed Territories

Global trends in Freedom

Note: "Does not include Related/Disputed Territories."

ee also

*List of indices of freedom

Notes

References

*cite book | title = "Freedom in the World 2006" | last= Freedom House | authorlink = Freedom House | publisher = Freedom House//Rowman & Littlefield | year = 2007 | isbn = 0-7425-5802-9

External links

* [http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15 "Freedom in the World"] - online at Freedom House