Freedom in Balkans – Part 2: Democracy
Tags: Albania, Ari Rusila, BalkanBlog, Balkans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, BRIC, Bulgaria, Croatia, democracy, freedom, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slocvenia
World Audit Org has been conducting sc. Democracy Audit since 1997. Their survey is concerned only with the criteria of democracy – which they hold to be Human Rights; Political Rights; Free Speech and Absence of Corruption. 150 nations, all those with populations in excess of one million are included. Related to 1st part of my article serial Freedom in Balkans Democracy Audit gives an other point of view to the same topic.
World Audit brings together statistics and reports from respected agencies such as Freedom House, Transparency International, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and The International Commission of Jurists. From their work and data WorldAudit.Org present and update the World Democracy Audit.
With this background it is understandable that the results are quite comparable with those in my earlier articles – Part 1 and its earlier more comprehensive version .
As source I have used latest Democracy Audit of WorldAudit.Org. From there I have selected following countries:
- Balkan states
- Top 3 and Worst 3 in the world
- U.S. as old superpower
- BRIC countries as rising superpowers
And here is the table (more compact version here)
|
Country/ Rank |
Democracy |
Press Freedom |
Corruption |
Overall Category |
|
Denmark |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
|
Sweden |
2 |
4 |
1 |
1 |
|
Finland |
3 |
1 |
5 |
1 |
|
United States |
15 |
14 |
15 |
1 |
|
Slovenia |
19 |
28 |
21 |
1 |
|
Bulgaria |
36 |
45 |
56 |
2 |
|
Croatia |
45 |
47 |
47 |
3 |
|
India |
48 |
46 |
67 |
3 |
|
Serbia |
50 |
50 |
67 |
3 |
|
Romania |
52 |
59 |
54 |
3 |
|
Brazil |
53 |
56 |
62 |
3 |
|
Macedonia |
59 |
65 |
56 |
3 |
|
Albania |
64 |
70 |
67 |
3 |
|
Bosnia and Herzegovina |
81 |
62 |
73 |
4 |
|
China |
120 |
138 |
56 |
4 |
|
Russia |
133 |
127 |
117 |
4 |
|
Uzbekistan |
147 |
144 |
136 |
4 |
|
Turkmenistan |
149 |
148 |
136 |
4 |
|
Myanmar |
150 |
149 |
147 |
4 |
In Balkans Slovenia is again on its own top class, Bosnia-Herzegovina is in the last shake of the bag – alone because disputed territories such as Kosovo were not included. The rest of the Balkan countries are between them. Of course one should remember limitations like overvaluation of western perspective with these kind of surveys but anyway from my point of view these survyes are good tools for benchmarking, future planning and debate.


