____________
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II. Detailed Analysis A. Freedom
The Freedom House country ratings can be combined with
census from the International Database data to show the number
of people who were living in countries with freedom, partial
freedom and no freedom. These data show that almost all people
in developed countries are free, freedom increased for both less developed and more
developed countries. However, using population
to examine freedom in less developed countries shows that
there was only moderate growth in the number of people in freedom in Less
Developed countries.
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| Free |
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| Partially Free |
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| Not Free |
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| Free |
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| Partially Free |
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| Not Free |
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1980 to 2000 Benin |
|
1980 to 2000 Bhutan |
Almost all of the growth and decline in armed conflict is accounted for by internal conflict, or civil wars. For all of this time period, the number of internal conflicts was about 50 or fewer in any single year. That is, among the 190 countries of the world, and at most 26% of countries were experiencing civil war, and thus almost 75% of countries were not.
Figure 2
Number of Armed Conflicts
1946-2001
Prepared by Dr. Shackman from 1946-2001 Armed conflict data
At
the
PRIO
site
(see below)
C. Refugees
The pattern of refugees seems to follow the pattern of civil warfare, shown in figure one above. That is, there was an increase during the 1980s and then a decrease in the 1990s.
During this time period, the number of refugees was generally less than 20 million in any year. This is less than 0.3% of the total world population, and less than 0.4% of LDC population. However, of course, any number of refugees is too many.
Figure 3
Estimated Number of Refugees, Worldwide, 1980-2003
Data on refugees by region show that over the last several
years, most refugees are from Asia, then from Africa. A smaller
number are from Europe. Additional data (not presented) shows
that there has been a continuous decline in the number of
refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean, from 172 thousand
in 1992 to 85 thousand in 2001.
D. Terrorism
Data from the US Department of State shows that, since the late 1980s, there has been a decline in the number of international terrorist attacks. Data from the Terrorism Knowledge base show a similar decline since the early 1980s.Figure 5
Total International
Terrorist Attacks
1977-2003 by year
Prepared by Dr. Shackman from data at Patterns of
Global Terrorism http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/index.htm
Figure 6
International
Terrorist Incidents, by region
1991-2003
Prepared by Dr. Shackman from reports at Patterns
of Global Terrorism http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/index.htm
_____________
III. AppendixFreedom
Freedom House state freedom is here
http://www.freedomhouse.org/ratings/index.htm
Since 1972, Freedom House has published an annual assessment of
state state of freedom by assigning each country and territory
the status of "Free," "Partly Free,"
or "Not Free" by averaging their political rights and
civil liberties ratings.
The definitions were listed at
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2000/methodology.htm
According to this page: "The Survey attempts to judge all
countries and territories by a single standard and to emphasize
the importance of democracy and freedom. At a minimum, a
democracy is a political system in which the people choose their
authoritative leaders freely from among competing groups and
individuals who were not designated by the government. Freedom
represents the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of
fields outside the control of the government and other centers
of potential domination."
"Freedom House rates ... the rights and freedoms enjoyed by individuals in each country or territory."
"The Survey’s understanding of freedom encompasses two general sets of characteristics grouped under political rights and civil liberties. Political rights enable people to participate freely in the political process, which is the system by which the polity chooses authoritative policy makers and attempts to make binding decisions affecting the national, regional, or local community. In a free society, this represents the right of all adults to vote and compete for public office, and for elected representatives to have a decisive vote on public policies. Civil liberties include the freedoms to develop views, institutions, and personal autonomy apart from the state."
In the figure presented above, each former Soviet Union
state is counted seperately. Before the break up of the Soviet
Union in 1991, each state had the Soviet Union rating of "Not
Free" assigned to it. After 1991, each state was rated
seperately.
Armed Conflict,
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO),
http://www.pcr.uu.se/
specifically
from the Armed Conflict 1946 - 2001, Gleditsch, Wallensteen,
Eriksson, Sollenberg & Strand, International Peace Research
Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Department of Peace and Conflict
Research, Uppsala University at this PRIO website http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO/
The codebook is: Armed Conflict
Dataset Codebook, Håvard Strand, Lars Wilhelmsen &
Nils Petter Gleditsch, International Peace Research Institute,
Oslo (PRIO). in collaboration with: Peter Wallensteen,
Margareta Sollenberg & Mikael Eriksson, Department of
Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
and Halvard Buhaug & Jan Ketil
Rød, Department of Sociology and Political
Science/Department of Geomatics, Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU). Version 1.2, 31 January 2003
According to the codebook: "An armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths." (page 2.)
Further, according to the codebook (page 8 and 9):
There are four types of conflict:(We [Shackman, Liu and Wang] called the first type of conflict "colonial", just for easier graphing.).
1. Extra-state: Extra-state conflict is a conflict over a territory between a government and one or more opposition groups, where the territory is a colony of the government.
2. Interstate: Interstate conflict is a conflict between two or more countries and governments.
3. Internal: Internal conflict is conflict within a country between a government and one or more opposition groups, with no interference from other countries
4. Internationalized internal: Similar to Internal conflict, but where the government, the opposition or both sides receive support from other governments
Terrorism
Patterns of Global Terrorism - US Department of
State Patterns of Global
Terrorism http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/index.htm
statistical data from various years, of international
terrorism, that is, terrorism involving people from more than
one country.
See the introduction at for definitions of
terrorism:
No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance. For the purposes of this report, however, we have chosen the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d). That statute contains the following definitions:
* For purposes of this definition, the term "noncombatant" is interpreted to include, in addition to civilians, military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed or not on duty.
Prepared by gene shackman, wang xun and ya-lin liu
First Copyright March 2003, Renewed October 2004 and in April
2008. May be freely used provided proper citation is
given.
Cite as
Shackman, Gene, Ya-Lin Liu and Xun Wang. 2004. Brief review of
world political trends. Available at
http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/polsum.html