Economic and Political Freedom Go Hand In Hand

Where:

Pn= political rights score; In= economic freedom score; a1= the average ratio of P when I equals zero; and a2= the rate of change in politcal freedom as economic freedom varies.

This equation explains a significant amount of the variation between Freedom Houses's index of political rights and the Index of Economic Freedom

In the area of economic freedom and civil liberties, the author found that those countries scoring economically "free" (below 2.0) on the Heritage Index, on average scored "free" in civil liberties (below 2.5) on Freedom House's survey. By contrast, those countries that scored economically "repressed" (4.0 or above) on the Heritage Index, on average scored "unfree" in civil liberties (5.5 or above) on the Freedom House study.

When the author ran a regression analysis on the two scores, the statistical association between economic freedom and civil liberties was actually stronger than the connection with political rights. For example, the author discovered that 69% of the time, an improvement in a country's economic freedom score was accompanied by an improvement in their civil liberties score, as opposed to the 64 percent figure in the political rights analysis. Again, the statistical tests of this relationship showed that only a one in a million chance existed that these findings resulted from chance or random associations.

This finding can be expressed in the following equation:

Cn=a1+a2 (In)

Where:

Cn= civil liberties score; In= economic freedom score; a1= the average ratio of C when I equals zero; and a2= the rate of change in politcal freedom as economic freedom varies.

This equation explains a significant amount of the variation between Freedom Houses's index of civil liberties and the Index of Economic Freedom

While it is nearly impossible to determine whether it is economic freedom or political freedom that comes first, it is not impossible to see a statistically significant relationship between the two. This analysis shows that, in general, those countries which are more economically free also are more politically free and have higher levels of civil liberties, than those countries with less economic freedom. The message here is simple: economic freedom and political freedom go hand in hand.

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