Skip to contents

fh_pmm archives the Freedom House data included in D. Pemstein, S. A. Meserve, and J. Melton. Replication Data for: Democratic Compromise: A Latent Variable Analysis of Ten Measures of Regime Type. 2013. DOI: 10.7910/DVN/WWYOHU., while fh archives the 2025 edition of the Freedom in the World data (updated to 2024). For the latest version of the Freedom House data, always use download_fh.

Usage

fh_pmm

fh

Format

An object of class tbl_df (inherits from tbl, data.frame) with 6438 rows and 7 columns.

An object of class tbl_df (inherits from tbl, data.frame) with 9965 rows and 11 columns.

Source

D. Pemstein, S. A. Meserve, and J. Melton. Replication Data for: Democratic Compromise: A Latent Variable Analysis of Ten Measures of Regime Type. 2013. DOI: 10.7910/DVN/WWYOHU.

F. House. Freedom in the World 2025: The Uphill Battle to Safeguard Rights. Tech. rep. Freedom House, Feb. 2025.

Details

The Freedom House dataset released in 2025 is different from the archived PMM data for 49 country years:

fh |>
  dplyr::inner_join(fh_pmm) |>
  dplyr::select(extended_country_name, year, fh_total_reversed, pmm_freedomhouse) |>
  dplyr::mutate(fh_total_reversed = (fh_total_reversed/2)+ 1) |>
  dplyr::filter(fh_total_reversed != pmm_freedomhouse) |>
  print(n = 50)
#> Joining with `by = join_by(year, extended_country_name, GWn, cown,
#> in_GW_system)`
#> # A tibble: 49 x 4
#>    extended_country_name                 year fh_total_reversed pmm_freedomhouse
#>    <chr>                                <dbl>             <dbl>            <dbl>
#>  1 Antigua & Barbuda                     1982               6                5.5
#>  2 Argentina                             1982               2.5              5
#>  3 Bahamas                               1982               6.5              6
#>  4 Bangladesh                            1982               3                2.5
#>  5 Bolivia                               1982               2.5              5.5
#>  6 Brazil                                1982               4.5              5
#>  7 Burundi                               1982               1.5              2
#>  8 Comoros                               1982               3.5              4
#>  9 Congo                                 1993               5                4
#> 10 Congo, Democratic Republic of (Zair~  1977               2                1.5
#> 11 Congo, Democratic Republic of (Zair~  1978               2                1.5
#> 12 Congo, Democratic Republic of (Zair~  1982               2                1.5
#> 13 Cote D'Ivoire                         1980               3                2.5
#> 14 Cote D'Ivoire                         1999               2.5              3
#> 15 Swaziland                             1978               3                2.5
#> 16 Grenada                               1982               2.5              2
#> 17 Guinea-Bissau                         1982               2                1.5
#> 18 Guyana                                1982               3.5              3
#> 19 Honduras                              1982               5.5              5
#> 20 India                                 1976               4                4.5
#> 21 Kiribati                              1982               6                6.5
#> 22 Liberia                               1982               2                3
#> 23 Liberia                               2001               2                2.5
#> 24 Malta                                 1982               5.5              5
#> 25 Mauritius                             1982               5.5              6
#> 26 Mozambique                            1982               1                1.5
#> 27 Myanmar (Burma)                       1982               1.5              1
#> 28 Panama                                1982               3                3.5
#> 29 Peru                                  2000               4.5              5
#> 30 Philippines                           1982               3.5              3
#> 31 Poland                                1982               2                2.5
#> 32 Portugal                              1982               6                6.5
#> 33 Sao Tome and Principe                 1982               2                1
#> 34 Saudi Arabia                          1982               2                1.5
#> 35 Korea, Republic of                    1982               3                2.5
#> 36 Spain                                 1982               5.5              6.5
#> 37 Sri Lanka (Ceylon)                    1982               5.5              4.5
#> 38 Surinam                               1982               2                1.5
#> 39 Surinam                               1990               3                4.5
#> 40 Syria                                 1982               2                1.5
#> 41 Taiwan                                1978               3                3.5
#> 42 Taiwan                                1980               3                2.5
#> 43 Taiwan                                1991               5                3
#> 44 Tajikistan                            1991               3                5
#> 45 Turkey (Ottoman Empire)               1982               3                3.5
#> 46 Uganda                                1982               3                3.5
#> 47 Uruguay                               1982               3                3.5
#> 48 Vanuatu                               1982               6                5
#> 49 Zimbabwe (Rhodesia)                   1982               4                3.5

Many, but not all of these cases seem to be concentrated around the problematic year of 1982.

Variables

pmm_country

The original country name in the PMM replication data.

year

The calendar year. This is approximate. The surveys cover specific periods in the original data that do not always overlap with a single year. In particular, the year 1981 is "skipped" – a single survey covers Jan.1981 - Aug. 1982 and its value is assigned to 1982 here.

pmm_freedomhouse

A reversed measure of political rights and civil liberties, from 1 to 7, with higher values being more democratic (the opposite of the actual FH data).

fh_total_reversed

A reversed measure of political rights and civil liberties, from 0 to 12, with higher values being more democratic (the opposite of the actual FH data). To convert to the same scale as pmm_freedomhouse, divide by two and add 1, or average pr and cl and then reverse.

pr

The political rights scores (from 1 to 7) in the archived Freedom House data (fh).

cl

The civil rights scores (from 1 to 7) in the archived Freedom House data (fh).

status

The status of the country in the archived Freedom House data (Free, Partly Free, Not Free).

fh_total

The sum of the political rights and civil liberties scores. Ranges from 2 to 14.

Standard descriptive variables (generated by this package)

extended_country_name

The name of the country in the Gleditsch-Ward system of states, or the official name of the entity (for non-sovereign entities and states not in the Gleditsch and Ward system of states) or else a common name for disputed cases that do not have an official name (e.g., Western Sahara, Hyderabad). The Gleditsch and Ward scheme sometimes indicates the common name of the country and (in parentheses) the name of an earlier incarnation of the state: thus, they have Germany (Prussia), Russia (Soviet Union), Madagascar (Malagasy), etc. For details, see Gleditsch, Kristian S. & Michael D. Ward. 1999. "Interstate System Membership: A Revised List of the Independent States since 1816." International Interactions 25: 393-413. The list can be found at http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/statelist.html.

GWn

Gleditsch and Ward's numeric country code, from the Gleditsch and Ward list of independent states.

cown

The Correlates of War numeric country code, 2016 version. This differs from Gleditsch and Ward's numeric country code in a few cases. See http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/state-system-membership for the full list.

in_GW_system

Whether the state is "in system" (that is, is independent and sovereign), according to Gleditsch and Ward, for this particular date. Matches at the end of the year; so, for example South Vietnam 1975 is FALSE because, according to Gleditsch and Ward, the country ended on April 1975 (being absorbed by North Vietnam). It is also TRUE for dates beyond 2012 for countries that did not end by then, depsite the fact that the Gleditsch and Ward list has not been updated since.