Freedom in The World - Country Rankings

Country Rankings

The rankings below are from the Freedom in the World 2010, 2011, and 2012 surveys and reflect events in 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively. Each pair of political rights and civil liberties ratings is averaged to determine an overall status of "Free" (1.0-2.5), "Partly Free" (2.51-5.5), or "Not Free" (5.51-7.0).

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

1. A competitive, multiparty political system;
2. Universal adult suffrage for all citizens (with exceptions for restrictions that states may legitimately place on citizens as sanctions for criminal offenses);
3. Regularly contested elections conducted in conditions of ballot secrecy, reasonable ballot security, and the absence of massive voter fraud that yields results that are unrepresentative of the public will; and
4. 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.