Insufficient Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Superfluity of Corruption

Abstract

While having several overlapping features with other indices, this particular group is focused on the legal framework within the state, the rule of law, perceptions of, or the real, corruption, and human rights enjoyed by citizens individually or in groups. The findings show many similarities with other indices, with Scandinavian and Western countries showing the best results and the opposite end of the list being populated by several post-Soviet countries and Turkey. The countries from the Western Balkans are generally just above the worst-performing states. Some rare exceptions in the scores are when a less than democratic country, like Belarus, with some serious human rights issues, achieves a better score in the category of corruption than in other fields. Bosnia-Herzegovina is the worst scoring country from the Western Balkans and in the group with Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. Legal frameworks for the rule of law and protection of human rights are often adopted and in place, but the practice denies many of the rights in several countries, most of them newly independent. From Belarus in position 33 to Azerbaijan in the last, 45th place, all these countries have experienced communism and became independent in the 1990s or later, except for Turkey and two former communist countries, Bulgaria and Albania.