Freedom in the World 1985-1986 Complete Book — Download
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Raymond D.Gastil LIBRARY COPY DO NOT REMOVE! Freedom in the World Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1984-1985 A FREEDOM HOUSE BOOK Greenwood Press issues the Freedom House series "Studies 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 Slyk. Studies in Freedom, Number 1 Escape to Freedom: The Story of the International Rescue Committee by Aaron Levenstein. Studies in Freedom, Number 2 Freedom in the World Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1984-1985 Raymond D. Gastil With Essays by Samuel P. Huntington Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. Leonard R. Sussman GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London, England Copyright © 1985 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: 0-313-23180-X ISSN: 0732-6610 First published in 1985 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 1984 Introduction: Freedom in the Comparative Survey 3 Survey Ratings and Tables for 1984 13 PART II. CURRENT ISSUES Communications and UNESCO 61 Leonard R. Sussman The 1982 and 1984 Elections in El Salvador 87 The Presidential and Legislative Elections in Panama 115 PART III. UNDERSTANDING DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM Defining Democracy 129 A Historical Survey of Freedom in America 145 A Note on Economic Freedom 169 The Forms and Formalities of Liberty 179 Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. Contents PART IV. DEVELOPING DEMOCRACY Will Mare Countries Become Democratic? 193 Samuel P. Huntington Analyzing the Democratic Struggle in Central America 227 The Diffusion of Democracy and Liberal Modernism 257 PART V. COUNTRY SUMMARIES Introduction 273 Summaries 278 PART VI. RELATED TERRITORY SUMMARIES 413 INDEX 433 vi Map Map of Freedom 24 Tables 1. Independent Nations: Comparative Measures of Freedom 14 2. Related Territories: Comparative Measures of Freedom 18 3. Ranking of Nations by Political Rights 22 4. Ranking of Nations by Civil Liberties 23 5. Most Significant Changes: 1983 to 1984 32 6. Ratings of Countries Since 1973 35 7. National Elections and Referenda 49 8. Political-Economic Systems 54 9. News Media Control by Countries 64 Preface Americans have many foreigp 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 achieving 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. This yearbook marks the twelfth 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 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. The 1983-84 yearbook addressed the problems of corporatism, and the health of democracy in the third world. It also incorporated the papers and discussions of a conference held at Freedom House on supporting democracy in main- land China and Taiwan. In addition to the materials of the Comparative Survey the 1984-1985 yearbook considers aspects of the current UNESCO controversy, and includes reports on elections in El Salvador and Panama. (A Freedom House report on the 1984 election in Nicaragua will be available shortly.) We return this year to the themes of the first yearbook: the definition of democracy and freedom and a consideration of their development. The particular problems of democracy in Central America and of the general history and diffusion of democracy are analyzed. This year the country Preface summaries are augmented for the first time by summaries for the related territories. We 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 Paxil Seabury. We would also like to thank the Academy of Independent Scholars in Boulder, Colorado and Hillsdale College for the opportunity to develop further a few of the ideas in this yearbook. 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. 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. PART I The Survey in 1984 Introduction: Freedom in the Comparative Survey It is the natural right of all people to have an equal share in the governance of their society and to reach consensus through open discussion with their fellow citizens on the nature of their society. To support this proposition, the Comparative Survey of Freedom was first published in 1973; it has appeared annually in the Freedom House journal, Freedom at Issue.1 Since 1978 the Survey has also been included in Freedom in the World.2 In the Survey, democracy is seen as the institutional form of freedom in the modem world. From the point of view of the Survey, "freedom" is essentially internal political freedom and the necessary context of that freedom. While the individuals and organizations that support the Survey are interested in a variety of national and international issues, it has been from the beginning a central principle of the Survey that it not be influenced or sidetracked by the demands of current or prospective policy concerns. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, and Poland should be seen through the same lens and judged on the same basis. Each year there has been one or more challen- ges to this principle, but by and large it has been preserved. This year the decision to improve the rating of Iran may seem an affront to some Americans. Iran's leaders certainly do not appeal to most of us; the horrors they have inflicted on those they disagree with are indefensible. Yet as in Poland, South Africa, and so many other troubled countries, there are elements of democracy and pluralism in their behavior that we must also recognize in a fair-minded analysis. Freedom should be distinguished from independence or group self-determination. Many an autocrat has come to power through his appeal as a defender or advocate of his group's right to self- determination. This has been a major part of the appeal of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Castro to their respective peoples. Yet as the history of Haiti has shown repeatedly, national independ- ence has little to do with individual or even group freedom. The 3 Introduction: Freedom Haitian people would be freer today if they had never gained their independence from France in the bloody struggles for independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Certainly the people in the French dependencies of Guadeloupe and Martinique are "freer," as well as the many peoples around them that remained with the British Empire until recently. Nevertheless, interest in political democracy and group freedom overlap, for, if framed in a democratic context, the desire for greater self-determination for minorities in great states, or of colonies in empires, is a justified concern of democrats. It is our belief that people everywhere are interested in the freedoms with which we are concerned, and that if they come to experience them and feel they have a reasonable chance to secure them, they will rise in their defense. Evidence for this is contained in a recent report of the Indian "People's Union for Civil Liberties." After decrying the many problems for civil liberties in India the report continues: It is a tribute to the resilience of the Indian people that when the State is becoming the oppressor of the people, and the institutional decay has left the people unprotected, scores of local action groups, of tribals, landless, workers in unorganized sectors, bonded labour, students, journalists, and women have started to assert themselves in defense of the values of the civil society. It is a measure of their success, though as yet modest and frac- tional, that the government has had to beat a retreat on the proposed Forest Bill, withdraw the Bihar Press Bill, initiate a bill on criminal assaults against women, revise minimum wages, and move slightly forward on the bonded labour issue.