Freedom in Balkans - Part 2: Democracy
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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 superpowersCountries below are in their rank order from top-3 to worst-3. The numbers indicate the rank of each country in World ranking in order Democracy-Press Freedom-Corruption-Overall Category and the results are: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-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 4In 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 surveys are good tools for benchmarking, future planning and debate.