Civil Liberty and Democracy
Overall, there are three groups of civil liberties and they can all be subdivided into a number of
features out of which not all are directly relevant for democracy:
Personal Integrity Rights (freedom from …):
A1) Freedom from deprivation of life, torture and other cruel or degrading treatment
A2) Freedom from interference with private sphere (home, family, or communication)
A3) Freedom from discrimination, harassment, and intimidation
Personal Exertion Rights (freedom of …):
B1) Freedom of assembly
B2) Freedom of association
B3) Freedom of expression
B4) Freedom of movement
B5) Freedom of residence
B6) Freedom of thought and conscience
B7) Freedom of religion
Legal rights (rule of law):
C1) Independence, impartiality, and integrity of the courts
C2) Equality before the law and equal protection under the law
C3) Due process of law
C4) Laws are prospective, open, and clear
C5) Laws are possible to comply with
C6) Laws are coherent with one another
C7) Laws are sufficiently stable
C8) Easy accessibility to the courts
C9) Officials are accountable for compliance with the laws
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General question: Do citizens enjoy civil liberty with respect to political participation and information?
Relationship to democracy: The relation between civil liberties and democracy can be systematically summarized in
different ways (cf. Bobbio, 1990: 48-49). Some see civil liberties and democracy as distinct phenomena that can,
but not necessarily do, coexist. This is for example Isaiah Berlin’s (1997) point of view. He argued that liberty in
the negative sense is compatible with some kinds of autocracy, or at any rate with the absence of selfgovernment because civil liberty concerns the area of control, whereas self-government concerns its source. In
short, there is a logical distinction between answering the questions about who governs and the question about
how far the government interferes in the life of the citizens (cf. Böckenförde, 1991: 365).
Consequently, a democracy may deprive the individual citizen of civil liberties which he or she
might have under another form of government (Berlin, 1997: 201-203). However, Habermas (1992: 610-616;
1996: 294-301), among others (e.g. Kägi, 1953: 134-136; Beetham, 2005), has criticized this schism between civil
liberties and popular sovereignty to be flawed because certain rights are constitutive conditions for free political
opinion formation and decision-making. Thus, some civil liberties can be understood as necessary conditions for
the meaningful functioning of self-government because they are immanent to a democratic process. Among the
most relevant civil liberties, we have a number of personal exertion rights: namely the freedoms of expression,
association, assembly, and movement (Dahl, 1989: 221; Rawls, 1971: 225[§ 36]; Beetham, 2005; Lauth, 2004: 330350), whereas freedom of religion, residence, and culture in addition to the economic rights regarding property,
contract, and occupation are not democratic rights.
Also personal integrity rights have now and then been integrated to the definition of democracy
(e.g., Beetham, 2005; Merkel, 2004). However, others consider democracy and personal integrity rights to be
distinct phenomena and democracy. Actually, democracy is used as one of the predominant explanatory factors
in studies that attempt to account for respect for personal integrity rights (e.g. Poe & Tate, 1994; Davenport &
Armstrong, 2004). Thus, in the definition and measurement of democracy one should limit the focus to
violations of personal integrity that are directly politically motivated, which means that they are likely to be
covered by the assessment of respect for personal exertion rights.
As regards legal rights, the relationship to democracy is also disputed. While some consider the
rule of law to be conceptually distinct from – although probably causally related to – democracy (e.g. Raz, 1979;
Fuller, 1969; Finnis, 1980; Rawls, 1971), others count the rule of law to the core attributes of democracy (Lauth,
2004; Merkel, 2004; O’Donnell, 2004; Beetham, 2005). The independence of the judiciary explicitly – and other
legal rights implicitly – make up an independent dimension of the framework besides civil liberties which is why
I will not go into detail about which (if any) legal rights are democratic rights. However, it needs further
discussion further whether this separation is plausible and whether judicial independence is the only element of
the rule of law that should be evaluated in the measurement of democracy.
The measurement of civil liberty is not only important to distinguish democracies from
autocracies but it is also critical for the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, depending on
the level of civil liberty repression. Hence, a fine-grained scale (at least four points) that covers the whole
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continuum (from best to worst scenario) is needed for each of the disaggregated components. Moreover, for
most of the components it would be rewarding to distinguish between rights violations committed by
state/government agents and non-state/non-government agents, respectively. Finally, meaningful assessments of
respect for civil liberties are very difficult to measure in a ‘near objective’ way. Coding should be left to experts
(preferably two for each country year) because the discovery and interpretation of relevant sources will be
extremely demanding – especially when going more than a few decades back in time. A comprehensive code
book with detailed definitions, descriptions, and examples plus coordinators should support the ‘equivalence’ of
scores across space and time.
Project manager: Svend-Erik Skaaning (Aarhus University, Denmark).
Additional experts: Arthur Banks (independent scholar), David Beetham (U. of Leeds, emeritus), David
Cingranelli (SUNY, Binghamton), Christian Davenport (U. of Maryland), Todd Landman (Essex).
Organizations: American Bar Foundation, Amnesty International, Freedom House, Human Rights First
(formerly Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), Human Rights Watch, Interamerican Commission on
Human Rights, International Freedom of Expression Exchange.
Studies; datasets: Arat (1991); Freedom House (2006); Green (2001); Landman (2004); Landman, Carvalho
(2009), Skaaning (2006a, 2006b, 2008). Freedom House (Freedom of the Press Index and parts of Freedom in the
World, Nations in Transit, Countries at the Croosroads); Reporters without borders (Annual Worldwide Press Freedom
Index); CIRI (parts of the Human Rights Database); Gibney (Political Terror Scale); Skaaning (most of The Civil Liberty
Dataset); Bertelsmann Foundation (parts of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index); Kucera (Trade Union Rights.)
All existing datasets have shortcomings in the form of limited coverage (years, countries, rights), few sources, lack of transparency
and inter-coder reliability tests, low discriminatory power and/or flawed conceptualization (redundancy, conflation, no
systematic ordering between different abstraction levels). Only one source provides systematic and relatively detailed information
on respect for most civil liberties, namely the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 1976Note: civil liberties issues pertaining specifically to elections are covered in later sections.
Freedom of expression
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Does the government/state use onerous libel or security laws to control political criticism, pluralism,
and information?
Does the government/state use intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, or physical
violence to control political criticism, pluralism, and information?
Does the government/state determine contents of, or hinder access to, news and information in print,
broadcast, or the internet to control political criticism, pluralism, and information?
Does the government/state use direct ownership of distribution networks or printing facilities,
prohibitive tariffs, onerous registration requirements, selective distribution of advertising, or bribery to
control political criticism, pluralism, and information?
Does the government/state censor or ban works of cultural expression (literature, art, music, etc.) to
control political criticism, pluralism, and information?
Do non-government/non-state agents use intimidation, harassment, or physical violence to control
political criticism, pluralism, and information?
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Freedom of assembly
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Does the government/state ban, restrict, or interfere (through intimidation, harassment, or excessive use
of violence) unduly with peaceful demonstrations, public protests, or private meetings to control
political criticism and pluralism?
Do non-government/non-state agents interfere (through intimidation, harassment, or use of violence)
unduly with peaceful demonstrations, public protests, or private meetings to control political criticism
and pluralism?
Freedom of association
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Does the government/state ban, restrict, or interfere unduly with the formation, recruitment, and
operation of peaceful civic associations, including interest organizations, to control political criticism and
pluralism?
Does the government/state ban, restrict, or interfere unduely with the formation, recruitment, and
operation of peaceful political parties to control political criticism and pluralism?
Do non-government/non-state agents intimidate, harass, or use violence against peaceful political
parties and civic organizations to control political criticism and pluralism?
Freedom of movement
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Does the government/state restrict emigration, immigration, or domestic movement to control political
criticism, pluralism, and information?
Do non-government/non-state agents restrict movement to control political criticism, pluralism, and
information?
Potential obstacles: To establish equivalence between scores across time and space, to find reliable sources for the period before the
third wave, and to distinguish between activities with and without political purposes.
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