IS IT POSSIBLE TO MEASURE FREEDOM?

Is It Possible to Measure Freedom?

Table of Contents

Introduction2

Discussion3

Defining Freedom3

Measurement of Freedom- In Literature5

Freedom - In View of Republican6

Freedom- In View Of Isaiah Berlin8

Negative Freedom8

Positive Freedom9

The Concepts of Power Implied11

Freedom & Political Equality12

Conclusion15

References16

Is it Possible to Measure Freedom?

Introduction

Among politicians, it is an oft-heard catchphrase that America is "the freest country in the world." Bill Clinton, in My Life- his memoir, said so, arguing for come down heavily on crime that being the most prosperous and the freest country in the world, why shouldn't America be the safest country in the world?" And in the similar way, United States was also called by Sally Kern- Oklahoma State Rep. as the world's greatest nation where a person has the most opportunities and freedoms. Apart from rhetoric, is it even possible to measure freedom? This paper seeks to analyse whether it is possible to measure freedom or not.

It has been tried by many to measure freedom. Freedom is a pretty deep notion, but various organizations (mostly think tanks) have turn up with possible standards to evaluate it—from fair elections, government transparency, and tariff rates on the staid end of the spectrum to the recreational drugs' accessibility on the more way-out side. The website, Freeexistence.org, since 2010, has even given a meta-index that lets every visitor to liberate the liberties valued by him/ her most; various existing rankings are then used by it to generate a listing of nations from most to least free. One extensively cited annual study, the Freedom in the World report, includes 194 countries and 14 territories, a score is got by each of which on a scale from 1 (Free) to 7 (Not Free), on the basis of the preponderance of civil liberties (e.g. freedom of association) and political rights (e.g. fair elections).

According to Ian Carter, one of the currencies of a liberal theory of distributive justice is freedom, and is thus supposed to be something that can be possessed by individuals in varying degrees. For liberals, non-specific (or content-independent) value has been possessed by freedom, i.e. value that is autonomous of the value of being free to do certain things. It is prescribed by liberals that not only individuals have certain particular freedom-types but also a measure of (overall) freedom has been possessed by them. Efforts to grasp the idea of overall freedom by weighting particular choices with respect to their values are flawed, as these do not give an explanation for non-specified value of freedom. In contrast, a closer analysis of the issues of the individualisation of actions and of the diverse kinds of constraints on freedom demonstrates overall freedom to be measurable in a way that reflects its non-specific value. Actions need to be individuated, to this end, in spatio-temporal terms and restrictions on freedom need to be considered with respect to the physical composition of actions.

Discussion

It is said often that in comparison to another, a person or society is much `freer', or that equal freedom is the right of people, or ...