Freedom of Expression and Absence of Corruption: a winning cocktail?

In a previous study, I have shared an analysis of data gained from the “State of Democracy” website. Among the many indices they track for all countries and all years since 1975, I have explored the freedom of expression. In this study, I am looking at two indices together: the freedom of expression and the absence of corruption. This leads to some interesting observations:

• These two indices are good at telling apart forms of government (democracy, autocracy, …)
• Improvement, and degradation, of the two indices are correlated
• “Static” reports like this pdf-document are “clumsy” at analyzing these data for many countries.

I think I commit to building a “dynamic” analysis tool that allows users (including myself) to explore the data.

An update (April 18 2022): a more interactive html-based report is available here.