Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

An Index of Freedom in the World • 109
such a measure in the index whilst most representatives of the Eastern
Hemisphere arguing against inclusion. For the record, we would include
a variable measuring the right to bear arms if it was up to us.1
Finally, we suggest that a series of statistical robustness checks be conducted.
For example, the Freedom House’s Civil Liberties index is very
well known as a measure of personal liberty. That index fails to live up to
some of our methodological standards especially as related to transparency
and replicability. Nevertheless, it would be comforting to know that
the personal liberties side of the IWF correlated well with the Freedom
House measure. Likewise, we are curious about how closely this index
correlates with the so-called State of World Liberty index (an amalgam of
EFW index, Heritage’s index, Freedom House’s indexes, etc.)
In the final analysis, we are very pleased with this effort and think it
should be quickly revised and published. There is always time to improve
the index in subsequent editions, as we have done with the EFW index, but
we believe it is time to get this project out into the hands of a wider audience.
1 Editor’s note: Subsequent to these comments, the authors explained that they would still
wish to include an indicator on the right to bear arms. They removed an indicator on
weapons from an earlier version of their paper only because it proved not to be an accurate
measure of the right to bear arms. A standardized measure of such across countries
does not appear to exist, but as soon as one is created or discovered the authors intend to
include it in their overall index.
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