Group items tagged

15 civil liberties indicators

4 the greatest degree of freedom

For the discretionary question, a score of 1 to 4 may be subtracted, as applicable (the worse the situation, the more points may be subtracted).

ach rating of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the greatest degree of freedom and 7 the smallest degree of freedom, corresponds to a specific range of total scores (see tables 1 and 2).

A country or territory is assigned two ratings

The average of a country or territory’s political rights and civil liberties ratings is called the Freedom Rating

A trend arrow must be linked to a specific change or changes in score, and cannot be assigned if the country had no net change in score

Electoral Democracy

designation “electoral democracy” to countries that have met certain minimum standards for political rights and civil liberties;

Countries and territories with a rating of 6 have very restricted political rights. They are ruled by authoritarian regimes, often with leaders or parties that originally took power by force and have been in office for decades.

hey may hold tightly controlled elections and grant a few political rights, such as some representation or autonomy for minority groups.

few or no political rights because of severe government oppression

limits on media independence

estrictions on trade union activities

discrimination against minority groups and women.

strongly limit the rights of expression

frequently hold political prisoners

virtually no freedom of expression or association, do not protect the rights of detainees and prisoners, and often control most economic activity.

Dr. Aaron Shirley, a physician who has worked for better health care for blacks in Mississippi, said that the history of segregation and violence against blacks still informs the way people see one another, particularly in the South, making some whites reluctant to support programs that they believe benefit blacks. That is compounded by the country’s rapidly changing demographics, Dr. Geiger said, in which minorities will eventually become a majority, a pattern that has produced a profound cultural unease, particularly when it has collided with economic insecurity. Dr. Shirley said: “If you look at the history of Mississippi, politicians have used race to oppose minimum wage, Head Start, all these social programs. It’s a tactic that appeals to people who would rather suffer themselves than see a black person benefit.” Opponents of the expansion bristled at the suggestion that race had anything to do with their position. State Senator Giles Ward of Mississippi, a Republican, called the idea that race was a factor “preposterous,” and said that with the demographics of the South — large shares of poor people and, in particular, poor blacks — “you can argue pretty much any way you want.”

A number of studies have recorded a sharp increase in dowry expectations, with a dowry consisting of both cash and expensive household goods,

Increased expenses associated with a daughter’s marriage may lead to postponement of marriage as parents struggle to accumulate resources in order to provide appropriate dowry and pay for the wedding (

we expect that in areas where women have a greater role in making decisions about different aspects of their lives,

women’s empowerment is negatively associated with age at marriage. Age at marriage may also be related to women’s autonomy through another channel: because younger brides are more likely to be docile, in areas where parents-in-law seek to limit women’s power in the household, they may have a preference for younger brides.

a woman’s autonomy may be manifest through her control of major resources, such as having her name

on a housing title or rental agreement, as well as through control of minor resources, such as having cash on hand for household expenditures. A number of studies have also suggested that the ability to m

Results suggest large differences in age at marriage by education, with women with higher secondary and college education marrying 4.9 years later than less-educated women. While the causal direction of this relationship is far from clear (obtaining a higher education could delay marriage, or delayed marriage may provide a greater opportunity to complete one’s education),

contrast, the neighboring state of Haryana has an average age of marriage that is 2 years lower, and about 30% of women get married by age 16. These states have similar educational and economic profiles, which is not surprising given that Haryana was carved out of Punjab. However, they differ in cultural traditions. Punjab contains a large number of Sikhs, and even Hindus are influenced by Sikh culture. Haryana shares cultural traditions with the central plains, so the two states differ substantially in the way gender is articulated.

If you believe that net worth is a reflection of merit, then any attempt to curb inequality looks unfair.

as a classic analysis by the historian James Weinstein showed, the reforms were intended to co-opt public pressure and avert more radical measures

they sprang from a pragmatic belief that the robustness of capitalism as a whole depended on wide distribution of the fruits of the system.

Committee for Economic Development, which played a central role in the forging of postwar consensus politics, accepting strong unions, bigger government, and the rise of the welfare state.

The C.E.D. called for tax increases to pay for the Korean War and it supported some of L.B.J.’s Great Society

Today, there are no centrist business organizations with any real political clout, and the only business lobbies that matter in Washington are those pushing an agenda of lower taxes and less regulation. Corporate profits and C.E.O. salaries have in recent years reached record levels, but there’s no sign of a return to the corporate statesmanship of the past (the occasional outlier like Warren Buffett notwithstanding)

Early in the past century, there was a true socialist movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into reform

EURASIA: A Breakthrough in Armenia as Other Regimes Harden Authoritarian Rule

EUROPE: Antidemocratic Leaders Undermine Critical Institutions

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA: Repression Grows as Democracies Stumble

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: Historic Openings Offset by Creeping Restrictions Elsewhere

The Struggle Comes Home: Attacks on Democracy in the United States

only two countries where a minority of people said the government had done well.

The US and UK have right-leaning governments, while Spain has a left-leaning one

compare how well each government is doing among its own supporters.

center-left Social Democrats,

Economic confidence is also linked to the belief the government is doing well.

who said the current economic situation is good were more likely to say the government was doing a good job on coronavirus.

women in every country are more likely than men to say their lives have changed because of the crisis,

The study was conducted only in countries where nationally representative telephone surveys are feasible.

Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style.

But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion

we may now substitute eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, Justices of the Supreme Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still famous and vivid alleged conspirators headed by Alger Hiss.

Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination.

He has offered a full scale interpretation of our recent history in which Communists figure at every turn:

hey have taken over the Supreme Court and made it “one of the most important agencies of Communism.”

Summary Venezuela is an example of a decaying petrostate, where the government is highly dependent on income from fossil fuels, power is concentrated in an elite minority, and corruption is widespread.  Petrostates are vulnerable to what economists call Dutch disease, a dynamic in which a government develops an unhealthy dependence on natural resource exports, and other important industrial sectors are deprived of investment. Venezuela has descended into economic and political turmoil under President Nicolas Maduro, as its once-substantial oil outflows have slowed to a trickle. Absent a power transition, analysts say the country’s prospects are grim.