This possibly should be in GQ, but I figured it would evolve into a discussion of degrees of freedom which probably should be in GD, so I started it here.
But I am serious . Is there a website which evaluates all aspects of what makes up “freedom” and determines which country is more free?
Are the Greek elections less tainted than the U.S.s? Is the Freedom of Speech more free in Hyde Park London than Central Park?
Is the Freedom to gather in a group less restricted in Micronesia than Australia?
What are the aspects of freedom that you are referring to?
Those things that people agree that define or make up “free” society.
You really think there is a general agreement on that?
John’s cite lists the two I am aware of, Freedom House and Heritage.
As with all things you need to consider the biases of the list compilers. Heritage, for example, only has Andorra, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore as “Free”. Freedom House has many more “Free” countries but lists Hong Kong and Singapore as only “Partly Free” - likely because of their somewhat limited democracies (as I understand it).
So you have to consider your weightings on economic freedom vs. political freedom, among many other factors. Are you more or less free if you have abortion rights? What about marriage rights for homosexuals? Are you freer if you have lower levels of taxation - or does that even factor into it?
Could you please name them? That would make it ever so much easier to find lists that include them in the first place.
Freedom House issues an annual ranking of nations based on their criteria for freedom:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15
It is a good place to start, but each year there are people dispute FH’s findings.
The basic problem is that all countries have rights and restrictions; and the inhabitants of each will tend to value the rights they have over those that others have because that’s what they’re used to.
For example - in the US, the right to bear arms is valued; it is not in the UK. In the UK the right to health care is valued; it is not in the US. (Yes, I know those are generalisations).
From the perspective of an inhabitant in each, they “feel” freer than the other because they have the right that they value. And they value it because they have it.
The US has more restrictive drinking and gambling laws than the UK; the UK has more restrictive driving and gun laws than the US. Who is more free? If you live in the US, you probably think you are; if you live in the UK, you probably think you are.
Nobody will ever agree on it.
Wiki has a whole list of freedom indices.
Including:
Democracy Index (produced by The Economist)
Index of Economic Freedom (produced by the Heritage Foundation and the WSJ)
Freedom in the World (by Freedom House)
Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders)
A good place to start on a basic set of freedoms is the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. It is often cited by the above mentioned thinktanks/NGOs as the basis for their analysis.
I prefer the ones that are part of the Failed State Index from The Fund From Peace and Foreign Policy magazine:
http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=fsi-grid2011
You need to click once on one of the indexes to see the best nations and again to see the worst. I agree with others that “freedom” depends on different factors and looking at the levels of the “Security Apparatus”, “Violations of Human Rights” “Legitimacy of the State” and others in a country, are important factors to get a better and more reliable picture.
For other years and info check here:
While I have great respect for the people who wrote this document and their intent, I don’t think I can take that seriously as a definition of freedom. Certainly some of the articles are correct. I’d guess that few people would dispute the rights listed in articles 1 through 22, which are largely political. The remaining articles start getting into economic policy, though, and certainly some could be interpreted as reducing freedom, especially if they were implemented from the level of national government. Article 24, for instance, says that all employees must get paid holidays. Likewise Article 26: “Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” It expresses good intentions, no doubt, but if enforced literally it could trap children in a failing public school system while working against private schools that offered better education. (A purely hypothetical scenario, of course.)