The 1999 Freedom House Survey: A Century of Progress

Key democratic norms remained under threat in 2018, but there were also unexpected breakthroughs in Armenia, Malaysia, and Ethiopia.

Civil-liberties scores have notably declined over the past several years, while political-rights scores have slightly improved—perhaps because modern authoritarians have begun to adopt subtler means of repression. Overall, however, freedom…

In 2017, the state of political rights and civil liberties around the world sunk to its lowest point in more than a decade. While the democratic powers grappled with their own internal…