Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

36 • Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom
to freedom reduce freedom today—another hypothesis that can be
tested once empirical measures are developed.22 In this case, democracy
becomes a proxy for freedom rather than freedom itself.
We now turn to whether or not democracy meets definitions of freedom.
In a negative sense, clearly not. My actions, as Berlin and Hayek
both note, can be blocked in a democracy as well as under other forms of
government. That this blocking may be less likely in democracy does not
itself create an identity between democracy and the lack of blocking since,
again, it may well occur under a democracy. This also means democracy
fails the triadic test.
As with claim freedoms, democracy might be conceived of as positive
freedom in a very narrow sense: for individuals who consider themselves
only truly liberated when they live in a democracy and can vote—i.e.,
when their sense of liberation is democracy. Whether or not positive freedom
is subject to such a narrow interpretation, and it likely is not, democracy,
like claim freedom, can at best define a very limited idea of positive
freedom.
Conclusion
The strong conclusion is that “claim-freedoms” are not freedoms; instead,
they are an excuse to limit freedom. The argument for claim-freedom is
nothing other than “confusing other good things with freedom,” a point,
as noted, made from the right by Hayek, for instance, and from the left
by Rawls, for example, and more-or-less from the middle by Berlin, for
one. The argument that democracy is a freedom suffers from similar flaws,
though at least one line of thought has found a way to associate democracy
directly with freedom.
So the philosophical debate over the last 40 to 50 years has not only
failed to clarify issues surrounding negative and positive freedom, it has
seen the increasing introduction of claim-freedom and other confusions.
These thoughts will be picked up again in the conclusion, but first, it is
worthwhile to look at how the differing “flavors” of freedom have been
addressed in various freedom charters in order to supplement the philosophic
debate with some insight on how these arguments have been translated
into the political realm.
4 Freedom, charters and indexes
So far we have examined the history of the concept of freedom and the
rise of “false” freedoms. Now we turn to the charters and indexes of freedom
available today. We will use the tools developed earlier in this paper
to see what “types” of freedom are found in indexes and charters.
22 For example, through Ian Carter’s reflective equilibrium.
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