Freedom in the World Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1983-1984 A FREEDOM HOUSE BOOK Greenwood Press issues the Freedom House series "Stuthes in Freedom" in addition to the Freedom House yearbook Freedom in the World. Strategies for the 1980s: Lessons of Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan by Philip van Slyck. Stuthes in Freedom, Number 1 Freedom in the World Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1983-1984 Raymond D. Gastil With Essays by William A. Douglas Lucian W. Pye June Teufel Dreyer James D. Seymour Jerome B. Grieder Norris Smith Liang Heng Lawrence R. Sullivan Mab Huang Leonard R. Sussman Peter R. Moody, Jr. Lindsay M. Wright GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London, England Copyright © 1984 by Freedom House, Inc. Freedom House, 20 West 40th Street, New York, New York 10018 All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. ISBN: 0-313-23179-6 ISSN: 0732-6610 First published in 1984 Greenwood Press A division of Congressional Information Service, Inc. 88 Post Road West Westport, Connecticut 06881 Printed in the United States of America 10 987654321 Contents MAP AND TABLES vii PREFACE ix PART I. THE SURVEY IN 1983 Introduction: Freedom in the Comparative Survey 3 Survey Ratings and Tables for 1983 11 PART II. ANALYZING SPECIFIC ISSUES Another Year of Struggle for Information Freedom Leonard R. Sussman 49 The Future of Democracy: Corporatist or Pluralist Lindsay M. Wright 73 Judging the Health of a Democratic System William A. Douglas 97 PART III. SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY IN CHINA Foreword 119 Supporting Democracy in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan): General Considerations for the Freedom House Conference Raymond D. Gastil and James D. Seymour 121 Comments and Discussion with Jerome B. Grieder 137 v Contents The Controversy over Popular Political Culture in China: 1978-1982, Lawrence R. Sullivan 165 Comments and Discussion 187 Prospects for Democracy In China Peter R. Moody, Jr. 203 Comments and Discussion 215 Obstacles to the Formation of Dissident Organizations In China, Liang Heng 225 Comments and Discussion 231 Democracy and Chinese Political Culture Lucian W. Pye 235 Comments and Discussion 243 Pluralism in the People's Republic of China: The Interaction Between Beijing and the Minorities June Teufel Dreyer 249 Comments and Discussion 263 Democratization on Taiwan Mab Huang 267 Comments and Discussion 277 Communications Within and With China Norris Smith 285 Comments and Discussion 295 Summary and Conclusions 313 PART IV. COUNTRY SUMMARIES Introduction 321 Summaries 326 INDEX 467 vi Map Map of Freedom 24 Tables 1. Independent Nations: Comparative Measures of Freedom 12 2. Belated Territories: Comparative Measures of Freedom 16 3. Banking of Nations by Political Rights 20 4. Ranking of Nations by Civil Liberties 21 5. National Elections and Referenda 31 6. Political-Economic Systems 36 7. Economic Systems and Economic Freedom 40 8. News Media Control by Countries 52 9. Ratings of Nations Since 1973 457 Preface Americans have many foreign policy interests. For most citizens our economic and security relations are foremost, and our foreign policy is directed primarily to securing these interests. How- ever, in the long run the future of our country will only be secured in a free and democratic world. From this perspective acTheving this world is both a vital interest of Americans and a vital interest of all peoples. To help us in understanding where we are in the struggle to achieve this world and to keep the relevance of this issue before the public, Freedom House has supported the Comparative Survey of Freedom since 1972. We note that Chile, Poland, South Africa, and Yugoslavia have been placed in the partly free category in the latest revision of the Survey. These changes were made on the basis of assessments of the current situation in these and other countries with com- parable levels of freedom. We emphasize, however, that all four countries—Chile, Poland, South Africa, and Yugoslavia—now appear on the bottom rung of partly free countries. These changes re- flect, in part, increased assertion of freedom by citizens of these countries, rather than an enlargement of freedom by govern- ment action. It is not Freedom House's intention to give comfort to the four regimes that continue to limit severely the liberties of their people. Rather, we feel obliged to acknowledge that in each of these countries the limits of liberty are currently being stretched by irrepressible forces within the societies. We hope our findings will encourage these forces of freedom. It would be a source of anguish to Freedom House if the new findings were misinterpreted to mean that governmental changes had significantly improved the status of citizens, which they have not. This yearbook marks the eleventh year of the Comparative Survey and is the sixth edition in the Freedom House series of annual publications. Previous yearbooks, in addition to focusing on the Comparative Survey, have emphasized different aspects of freedom and human rights. The first yearbook, the 1978 edition, examined basic theoretical issues of freedom and democracy and assessed the record of the Year of Human Rights. The second yearbook reported a conference on the potential internal and external factors promo- ting press and trade union freedoms, the struggle for democracy in ix Preface Iran, elections In Zimbabwe, and the relationship between human rights policy and morality. The 1981 yearbook contained essays and discussions from a Freedom House conference on the prospects for freedom in Muslim Central Asia. The 1982 yearbook emphasized a variety of approaches to economic freedom and its relation to political and civil freedom. In addition to the material on the Comparative Survey, this 1983-84 yearbook continues the series on the ideological struggle for information freedom. It also addresses the problems of corpo- ratism, both as a competing ideology to traditional democracy and as an academic interpretation of trends in modern democracy. This is followed by a discussion of criteria for estimating the health of democracy in the third world. This yearbook incorporates the papers and discussions of a conference held at Freedom House on supporting democracy in main- land China and Taiwan. After noting many difficulties and oppor- tunities the conferees agreed that the interest in democracy of the educated youth in both societies was a promising basis for democratic development. The American responsibility in the pro- cess was described as continuing to provide a credible alternative to authoritarian institutions through maintaining the present intense level of educational and information exchange and demon- strating our commitment to freedom and human rights. Ve acknowledge, once again, the contribution made by the advi- sory panel for the Comparative Survey. The panel consists of: Robert J. Alexander, Richard W. Cottam, Herbert J. Ellison, Seymour Martin Lipset, Lucian W. Pye, Leslie Rubin, Giovanni Sartori, Robert Scalapino, and Paul Seabury. We also express our appreciation to those foundations whose grants have made the Survey and the publication of this yearbook possible. We are especially grateful for the continuing primary assistance provided to the Survey by the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust. We thank the Earhart Foundation for its additional sup- port. The Survey and all Freedom House activities are also assisted by the generous support of individual members of the organization as well as trade unions, corporations, and public foundations which contribute to our general budget. No financial support from any government—now or in the past—has been either solicited or accepted. We also acknowledge the research and editorial assistance of Jeannette C. Gastil in producing this yearbook. The Executive Committee of Freedom House x PART I The Survey in 1983 Introduction: Freedom in the Comparative Survey At first sight many believe that it is foolish to attempt to develop a comparative survey of freedom. There seem to be too many definitions of freedom. Even Americans cannot agree on the meaning of "freedom," let alone people representing the other cultures in the world. However, as is usually the case, the feasibility of a project depends upon the objectives and purposes far which it is designed. From its beginnings in 1972 the purpose of the Survey has been to give the educated public a better grasp of the variations in politically relevant freedoms that exist In the world. By limiting the Survey to only this aspect of the subject, and by emphasizing its heuristic purposes many of the potential problems of the project have been set aside. As the Survey has been repeated over more than a decade an additional purpose has come to be providing a standard by which the educated public can judge trends in these freedoms. The need for such a survey originally was suggested by the imbalance of the media in favor of reporting catastrophes, their concentration on the problems of the world Instead of the accom- plishments. To this penchant for the examination of difficulties we should add a natural proclivity to report on relatively open societies, since these are the easiest to investigate. Reporting of the threats to freedom and of the petty and not-so-petty tyran- nies that beset the world tends to concentrate on areas of the world where information is relatively available, following the approach of the famous drunk searching for a lost quarter at night under the street lamp. Although he doesn't think he lost it there, this was after all where it was easiest to see. A further problem of reporting is the tendency of certain fads and "accepted verities" to becloud our understanding of the state of freedom in the world. The inspiration for the Survey goes back to the period of the Vietnam War.