The International Journal
of Not-for-Profit Law

Volume 6, Issue 1, September 2003

By Freedom House.
Edited by Adrian Karatnycky, Aili Piano, and Arch Puddington.
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
713 pp. $75 hardcover, $29.95 paper.

Begun in 1972, this annual survey ranks the world’s countries (plus related and disputed territories) by relative degrees of freedom. Coeditor Adrian Karatnycky, a senior scholar and counselor at Freedom House, writes an introductory overview, followed by an essay by Sumantra Bose on ethno-national conflict and one by Michael Shifter on the future of Latin American democracy. Country-by-country notes then comprise the bulk of the book.

Whereas just 29 percent of the nations in the world qualified as “free” in 1972, 46 percent so qualify today–the highest in the survey’s history. During the past year, 28 countries have moved toward freedom and 11 have moved away from it. Statistics suggest, then, that the war on terrorism has not produced greater repression overall, Karatnycky writes, though he adds a caveat: “[I]t is important to note that most of the significant upward momentum for freedom has occurred preponderantly in countries in which the impact of ideological terrorism has thus far been marginal or absent. Additionally, many of the countries confronting transnational terrorism are established democracies with a strong rule of law and have successfully preserved a wide array of personal, political, and civil freedoms….”