Paint by numbers
The map on the left labels countries as free (green), partly free (peach), and not free (red) for the year 2006. The classification is from Freedom House , a primarily US-government-funded organization. Each country is scored on political liberty and civil liberty; the combined average of these scores determines how the country is classified. Cuba, for example, receives the poorest rating on both political and civil liberties, and is thus categorized as "not free". The Wikipedia entry for democracy lists two other measures of democracy, one from the Polity IV project and the Democracy Index from The Economist. Each measure has its own scheme for measuring and weighting different characteristics felt to characterize democracies. Since the different measures assess many of the same things, it is not surprising that they show some agreement. But democracy is not a simple thing and it is far from clear which characteristics matter and how best to weight them. For example, doe...