Freedom House was founded almost sixty years ago by Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie and other Americans concerned with the dangers that faced democracy. Freedom House is led by a Board of Trustees composed of Democrats, Republicans and Independents; business and labor leaders; former senior government officials, scholars, writers and journalists. It conducts a large array of U.S. and overseas research, advocacy, education, and training activities that promote human rights, democracy, and free market economics, the rule of law, independent media, and U.S. engagement in international affairs (Freedom House: 2002).
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rFreedom House started publishing in 1973 and its aim was to provoke a discussion about the levels of political freedom. Even if the survey rated the level of freedom in all the countries in the world, actually it was concerned with the measurement of political democracy. Only one person performed the first surveys without any research staff. This may be an advantage because of the possible biases that a research staff might have. The survey was also considered by some as too rightist, and Freedom House itself continues to have a somewhat pro-Republican reputation. The critics were usually too general with no emphasis on the indicators or other elements of the surveys. As any survey that contains a large number of cases this also gives only a rough account of the development of democracy. It often disregards certain nuances that are connected to the relations between institutions, or how certain institutions as well as procedures take different shapes from country to country.
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rGastil (1991) notices that the first period surveys were concerned with more institutional features that often, as in the case of Latin America, do not reveal a real democratic development. Even if several Latin American countries have relatively open elections there is an oligarchy that transforms elections in something symbolic.
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rFreedom House provides a minimal definition of democracy as being “a political system in which the people choose their authoritative leaders freely from among competing groups and individuals who were not designated by the government. Freedom represents the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of fields outside the control of the government and other centers of potential domination” (Freedom House 2002). Contradicting this definition, among the criteria they consider in rating political systems one can also find “socioeconomic rights”, “freedom from war”, “freedom from gross socioeconomic inequalities” and “property rights” (Gastil 1991: 32-3; Ryan 1994: 10-1).
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rThe Freedom House ratings rely on a published checklist of political liberties and civil rights, but it has never been announced how this checklist is actually used in the process of rating the state of political and civil rights. By political rights the survey refers to permitting people to freely take part in the political process that represents the method by which the policymakers are chosen to make effective decisions. By civil liberties Freedom House means “the freedoms to develop views, institutions, and personal autonomy apart from state” (Freedom House: 2002).
rEach country is analyzed using as references descriptions in news, books or scientific journals. Already here it is easy to notice a first possible caveat. A change in a year in a country might not affect the rating of the country immediately and there is an inevitable element of subjectivity introduced by relying on a single judge. It bears stressing though that as time passed, the number of available sources increased and the checklist started to become more complex. Now the sources have increased in number and are based on information provided by the web and from the several institutions and non-governmental organizations.
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rAs the sources increased in number, the staff of Freedom House increased rapidly. In this way all countries of the planet could come to be covered. But inevitably there remains a great deal of uncertainty in the validity of the ratings regarding little known underdeveloped countries. This critique can be addressed to all world surveys since they inevitably depend on sources of information that are easy to access.
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rFreedom House divides territories into related and disputed. Related territories refer to colonies, protectorates and island dependencies of sovereign states between the two not being any serious political disputes. Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and French Guyana are in this category. These are enjoying a large range of political liberties and the m
