Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

Liberty in Comparative Perspective: China, India, and the West • 219
provided so fertile a ground for corruption, and if India could expand economic
freedom, then it might benefit from the optimism typical of young
and growing populations. Since India is much poorer than the West and
even China, it enjoys much greater advantages of backwardness and therefore
potentially faster growth prospects than the other big civilizations.
Creeping socialism in the West?
Whereas developing countries and emerging markets tend to score a little
better on economic freedom scales than on personal freedom scales,
the opposite is true for Western democracies (Vasquez and Stumberger,
2012). Although personal freedom and political freedom still look safe
in the West, economic freedom is under attack. As will be argued below,
Western Europe seems to be even more at risk than the United States.
Even “post-materialists” who care little about growth or prosperity
(because they already tend to be prosperous) should worry about the
attack on economic freedom for the following reasons: The ultimate
consequences of economic freedom are prosperity and political liberty.
Economic freedom is a prerequisite of political liberty. In Western
and Central Europe, economic freedom was established before political
democracy, if you define the latter by a franchise covering the entire adult
population. Applying such a definition of democracy, the statement is
even true for the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the oldest and most
stable accountable governments in Europe.
Without economic freedom or capitalism34 and the prosperity it promotes,
democracy or political freedom might not be viable.35 This view is
corroborated by econometric evidence (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994;
Lipset, 1994; Inglehart and Welzel, 2009).36 Acemoglu et al. (2008)
34 In my view, “economic freedom” and “capitalism” are synonyms.
35 Although capitalism is essential for the preservation of democracy, democracy might
undermine capitalism. Olson (1982) had suggested that older democracies grow more
slowly than younger ones which, in the long run, must undermine their prosperity. There
are some econometric studies to support this view (Bernholz, 1986; Weede, 1991).
Unfortunately, contemporary researchers seem to have lost interest in Olson’s proposition.
One reason might be that Olson (2000) himself has become more optimistic about
the impact of democracy on economic performance in his later work. Another reason
might be that the Anglo-Saxon economies did better than the losers of World War II since
the 1990s. The contrast between them had been the inspiration behind Olson’s (1982)
theorizing. Although North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009: 140ff.) do not persuade me that
the older public choice literature on the pernicious impact of organized interest groups
and their rent-seeking activities in democracies is misleading, there is a need to develop
appropriate research designs to find out which point of view fits better with the data.
36 Przeworski et al. deny a causal link between prosperity and democracy and assert that
“economic circumstances have little to do with the death of dictatorships” (2000: 117).
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