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In
its recent Human Development Report, the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) concluded that
democracy deficit puts human development and security at risk.
The report says that throughout the 1980s and 1990s political
development had been regarded subordinate to economic growth,
which proved disastrous to global human development. At the
end of twentieth century a wave of democratisation emerged
forcing authoritarian regimes to implement democratic reforms.
Nevertheless, a reverse wave has been triggered off by
political instability in recent years causing global economic
decline. A new wave of democracy building is said to be
urgently required to guarantee future global economic
development.
United
Nations Human Development Report 2002 (PDF format requires
ACROBAT
Reader).
The
Islamic World: a Democracy Gap
According to a report by
Freedom House, a non-profit and non-partisan
organization, almost 45 percent of 192 countries observed by
the organization are free ( democracies), 30 percent partly-free
states (semi-democracies), and 25 percent are not free. In terms of world population, approximately 40
percent reside in free countries, 23 percent in partly-free
ones, and about 36 percent in countries declared not free.
Adrain Karatnycky, president of Freedom House, points
outs that although the number of free countries is increasing
in general, states of the Islamic world remain undemocratic
thus creating a democracy gap.
The
Democracy Gap (PDF format requires
ACROBAT
Reader)
by
Adrain Karatnycky
Islamic
World Democracy Deficit by Michael Goldfarb
Worsening
Conditions for Democracy in Central Asia by
Michael Goldfarb
Freedom
House Report 2001-2001
Democratic
Development in East Asia
Freedom House views 20 percent of the forty-six
countries comprising Asia as democracies, categorizes 26
percent as partly free and more than half of the region's
countries as not free. The democratic countries are Cyprus,
India, Israel, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea,
Thailand and Taiwan. According to the report, Cyprus, Japan
and Taiwan are Asia's most democratic countries even
outperforming the European Union member state of Greece.
Freedom
House Country Rating 2001-2002
Democracy
and Democratization in East Asia: Myth or Reality?
(PDF format requires
ACROBAT
Reader)
by
Christian Schafferer
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