Zusammenfassung
Dieser Artikel präsentiert ein neues Datenset zu Messung von bürgerlicher Freiheit und diskutiert dieses in methodologischer Hinsicht bezüglich Reliabilität, Validität und Dimensionalität. Der Datensatz umfasst jährliche Angaben von Ende der 1970er bis 2003 für 28 (post-)kommunistische und 20 lateinamerikanische Länder. Theoretische Grundlage bildet die liberale Theorie. Zur Messung von bürgerlicher Freiheit werden fünf Indikatoren bestimmt: (1) Unabhängigkeit der Gerichte; (2) freie Meinungsäußerung; (3) Versammlungs- und Organisationsfreiheit; (4) Gedanken-, Gewissens- und Religionsfreiheit; (5) Bewegungs- und Niederlassungsfreiheit. Mittels statistischer Tests wird gezeigt, dass die Daten eine hohe Intercodiererreliabilität besitzen und eine gemeinsame latente Dimension aufweisen. Die Studie stellt nicht nur ein neues Messverfahren und einen neuen Index für bürgerliche Freiheit vor, sie bietet auch einen genauen Leitfaden für die Erstellung subjektiver Messungen, der Fragen des Fokus, des Umfangs, der Konzeptualisierung, der Messung und der Aggregation abdeckt.
abstract
This article presents the construction of a new dataset on respect for civil liberty and provides in-depth discussions of the methodological issues related to the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the scores. The dataset covers 28 (post-) communist and 20 Latin American countries on an annual basis from the end of the 1970s till 2003. It is theoretically well-grounded in liberal theory and consists of five indicators: 1) independence of courts; 2) freedom of opinion and expression; 3) freedom of assembly and association; 4) freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; and 5) freedom of movement and residence. Statistical tests show that the data is characterized by a fairly high degree of inter-coder reliability and that the indicators reflect a common latent dimension. Apart from proposing a new dataset and an index on civil liberty, this study offers a meticulous guideline for the creation of subjective measures that addresses the choices concerning focus, scope, conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation.
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Notes
The values of the Empowerment Rights Index reported in the CIRI dataset are based on a simple addition of the scores for five items (political participation, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and workers’ rights).
Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Post-communist countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan (Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia).
This distinction is also reflected in the disposition of international and regional human rights conventions.
The first refers to civil liberty and democracy; the second to economic rights, social rights, and cultural rights; and the third to solidarity rights such as peace and environmental protection. The placement of the latter four types of human rights in the different corners does not indicate theoretical or empirical ‘proximity’ to the other concepts.
The amount of information included in the reports has significantly increased since the beginning, so they now range from approximately 10 to 100 pages for each country with a tendency to be more comprehensive for large and/or trouble-ridden countries. Also, the number of issues assessed has increased during the years, but the five topics of interest have always been covered by the reports.
This is probably the main reason why Cingranelli and Richards (2004) only use the Amnesty International reports as sources for the coding of personal integrity rights and not of personal exertion (empowerment) rights included in their CIRI Human Rights Dataset.
The first year of assessment for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Cuba is 1979.
The indicators are: Independent Courts, Freedom of Speech and Press, Freedom of Assembly and Association, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom of Movement.
The latter reason finds more support in year by year calculations of the inter-rater reliability (Kappa) than the former.
A tentative index constructed through simple addition of the items except the item in question.
Post-communist: Principal component. The eigenvalue of the first component is 4.011, explaining 80.2% of the variation, whereas the eigenvalue of the second component is only 0.343, explaining less than 7% of the variation. Latin American: Principal component. The eigenvalue of the first component is 3.232, explaining 64.6% of the variation, whereas the eigenvalue of the second component is only 0.666, not even explaining 14% of the variation. All: Principal component. The eigenvalue of the first component is 3.745, explaining 75% of the variation, whereas the eigenvalue of the second component is 0.487, explaining less than 10% of the variation.
The items were rescaled (0-3) in order to support this logic.
A composite index based on assessments of freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights.
A composite index based on assessments of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, freedom of political participation, and workers’ rights.
The yearly correlations with the Freedom House index is fairly stable in both regions, while the correlations with the CIRI index are stable across the assessed years for the Latin American countries but comparatively lower in the early 1980s and the early 1990s for the (post-) communist countries.
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Appendix: Extract from the CLD Codebook
Appendix: Extract from the CLD Codebook
Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion (frerel)
Definition
The component specifies the extent to which individuals and groups have freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, that is, the right of the citizens to have and change religion or belief of own choice and alone or in community manifest their religion or belief in practice, worship, observance, and teaching in private or public as well as proselytize peacefully without being subject to actual limitations or restrictions.
Component Scale
(1) Severely restricted. Hardly any freedom of religion exists. As a rule, any kind of religious practice is controlled by the government and harshly suppressed.
(2) Fairly restricted. Some elements of autonomous organized religious practices exist and are officially recognized, but major religious directions are repressed, prohibited, or systematically disabled.
(3) Modestly restricted. There are minor restraints on the freedom of religion, predominantly limited to a few isolated cases, but as a rule, there are no interventions or prohibitions on communities or individual worshippers.
(4) Unrestricted. Unhampered freedom of religion exists.
Qualifying Violations
Ad 1) Religious activity is directly prohibited by government policy or is severely restricted for all major religions. In some instances, penalties on persons who engage in religious practices exist as well as educational campaigns against religion and obliging citizens to expose believers. Religious leaders are appointed by and subjected to public authorities, who control the activities of any religious direction in detail. Open expression of certain religious belief or any religious belief in general is incompatible with membership in the ruling party or attainment of influential public positions.
Ad 2) The government discourages religious beliefs in general or harasses some of the major religious directions in the country, but traditionally established religions are recognized and religious practice is generally tolerated, although kept under surveillance by the public authorities. People openly expressing traditional religious beliefs of certain sorts are discriminated and/or intimidated by public authorities. Sometimes members of several minor religious groups are not allowed to teach or practice their religion or face severe restrictions concerning registration, places of worship, restrictions on voluntary conversion, etc.
Ad 3) The government places minor or few restrictions on the rights of religious groups such as discrimination against a few minority religions in terms of denial of registration, hindrance of foreign missionaries to enter the country, not allowing citizens or foreigners to proselyte or hindering the access to or construction of places of worship. Few instances of discrimination and/or intimidation of individuals or groups due to their (often non-traditional) religion are carried out by public officials.
Ad 4) Citizens enjoy the right to practice any religious belief they choose. Religious groups may organize, select, and train personnel; solicit and receive contributions; publish works; and engage in consultations without government interference. There are no government restrictions on establishing and maintaining places of worship. All religious groups may worship freely and uphold contact with their coreligionists abroad. Active missionary presence is not restrained. The redistribution of former places of worship after earlier confiscation is not considered in the assessment. Whether the clergy is able to freely advocate partisan political views, oppose government laws, support political candidates, and otherwise freely participate in politics is only taken into consideration as far as restrictions and repression by public authorities is attributable to religious rather than direct political discrimination. It does not count as a restriction if religious communities must register, if the public authorities routinely grant registration and do not abuse the process to discriminate against a religion, and if the government does not constrain the right to worship before registration.
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Skaaning, SE. The Civil Liberty Dataset: Conceptualization and Measurement. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 2, 29–51 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-008-0003-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-008-0003-4