RESEARCH QUESTION: Are democracies or non-democracies more likely to violate human rights?
Freedom House’s regime classification criteria provided a good starting point for assessing what rights and liberties humans should be afforded in a society. We came up with many freedoms that humans value, and have the right to hold:
Right to free speech
Right to assemble
Right of association
Right to your own identity
Right to vote for any party you choose
Right of opposition parties to campaign
Right to access a free unbiased media
Right to live in a society without corruption
Right to live in a society with rule of law and an independent judiciary
Yet the existence of these rights constitutionally does not necessarily mean humans are able to exercise these rights in practice. We therefore decided to put the following questions into two categories and rate both democracies and non-democracies a score out of 5, with 5 being a strong adherence to this right and 1 being a weak or non-existent adherence to this right.
Category 1: Constitutional or legal guarantee of rights
- The right to free speech is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society, even if this speech is critical of the government or goes against popular opinion.
- The right to assemble is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society, even if these resulting assemblies share values or visions which do not align with government ideology or popular opinion.
- The right to association is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society, even if people choose to associate with critics of the government.
- The right to identity is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society, even if people choose to identify with beliefs that do not align with national identity.
- The right to vote is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society, even if people choose to vote for an opposition party.
- The right to access a free unbiased media is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society, without state censorship or influence.
- The right to live free from corruption is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society.
- The right to live under a rule of law and an independent judiciary is constitutionally or legally guaranteed in this society.
Category 2: Ability for citizens to exercise these rights in practice
- Citizens of this society practise free speech.
- Citizens of this society practice assembling in groups of their own choosing.
- Citizens of this society practice free and unconstrained association with whoever they choose.
- Citizens of this society practice identifying with any and all belief systems.
- Citizens of this society practice voting for a party they choose and these votes are respected and counted.
- Citizens of this society are exposed to a free uncensored media.
- Citizens of this society are protected by independent corruption controls that are consistently and effectively implemented.
- Citizens of this society are protected by laws that are enforced and upheld by an independent judiciary.
Thanks for posting this, Olivia. When you say a right is constitutionally or legally guaranteed, you mean that it's written down somewhere, even if the state doesn't enforce it? Or does it require some enforcement?
ReplyDeleteYes that's what I mean when I refer to a right being constitutionally or legally guaranteed - it either has to be in the states constitution or written in law.
ReplyDeleteThat was our starting point to see if states even protect these rights legally. Of course just because a law exists doesn't mean it is actually implemented in practice. That's why we developed the second category which then asks if the law is actually enforced in practice. Although it is important to have legal protection of these rights, and ideally they would be implemented legally, AND in practice, I think it's more important to have these rights actually practiced in reality.