The 1999 Freedom House Survey: A Century of Progress

Although the overall state of democracy in the world differed little from that in 2005, a series of worrisome trends seem to be contributing to a stagnation of freedom.

Promising advances in the status of freedom in the world during the past year have been matched by significant disappointments.

Authoritarian pushback continued to affect key regions and countries in 2007, but the courage, energy, and creativity that democrats continued to show gives reason to think that their cause has…