Freedom in the World is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-basednon-governmental organizationFreedom House that measures the degree ofcivil liberties andpolitical rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territories around the world.^[2]

2022^[1]

1972

  Free  Partly free  Not free  Not covered

Freedom in the World was launched in 1973 byRaymond Gastil. It 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".^[3] The report is often used by researchers in order to measure democracy and correlates highly with several other measures of democracy such as thePolity data series.^[4]

The Freedom House rankings are widely reported in the media and used as sources by political researchers. Their construction and use has beenevaluated by critics and supporters.^[5]

The rankings are from theFreedom in the World 2019,^[7] 2020,^[8] 2021,^[9] and 2022 surveys, each report covering the previous year. The average of each pair of ratings on political rights and civil liberties determines the overall status of "Free" (1.0–2.5), "Partly Free" (3.0–5.0), or "Not Free" (5.5–7.0).^[10]

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. Adultsuffrage for all citizens without criminal convictions (some states may further punish and subjugate people with criminal convictions by disenfranchising them from the democratic process);
3. Regularly contestedelections conducted in conditions ofballot secrecy, reasonable ballot security, and the absence of massivevoter 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 openpolitical campaigning.

An electoral democracy must have a score of 7 or more out of 12 in political rights subcategory A (Electoral Progress), an overall aggregate score of 20 in their political rights rating and an overall aggregate score of 30 in their civil liberties rating.^[11]

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.^[10]

* indicates"Civil liberties in country or territory" or"Human rights in country or territory" links.

PR = political rights, CL = civil liberties