This essay is one of a series exploring the topic: What impact does political entrepreneurship have on freedom and flourishing? The series commenced with a Preface which provides a synopsis of the series and explains why I think it is important to obtain a better understanding of political entrepreneurship.
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The aim of this essay is to consider the extent to which differences in
economic and personal freedom in different countries can be attributed to differences
in underlying cultural values rather than to other factors – most particularly,
the influence of political entrepreneurship and the ideologies adopted by
governments.
There are reasons to expect interactions between economic and personal
freedom to be mediated by economic development, change in cultural values and
democratization. As discussed in Part I, there are strong grounds to argue that
changes in the rules of the game which expand economic freedom often enable
countries to experience more rapid economic development. There is also evidence
that economic development leads to greater demand for democratization and
cultural values supporting personal freedom.
Research by Ronald Inglehart illustrates some steps in the process by
which an increase in economic development may generate pressure for greater
personal freedom. He writes:
“Economic development seems to bring gradual cultural changes that make mass publics increasingly likely to want democratic institutions and to be more supportive of them once they are in place. This transformation is not easy or automatic. Determined elites who control the army and police can resist pressure for democratization. But development tends to make mass publics more trusting and tolerant and leads them to place an increasingly high priority on autonomy and self-expression in all spheres of life, including politics, and it becomes difficult and costly to repress demands for political liberalization” (Inglehart 2000, p.95).
Figure 1 suggests the existence of a weak positive relationship between
economic freedom and an index of facilitating values developed by the author.
The index of facilitating values reflects the priority that people in different
countries place on autonomy, and the extent of interpersonal trust in different
countries. Autonomy was allocated 75% of the weight and trust was allocated
25%. The index was constructed using values data derived from the latest round
of the World Values Survey. Economic freedom is measured using recent data
from the Fraser Institute. This index reflects many different indicators
relating to size of government, legal systems and property rights, sound money,
freedom of international trade and regulation. Further information relating to
construction of Figure 1 is available elsewhere on this blog.
Figure 2 suggests the existence of a strong positive relationship
between emancipative values and personal freedom levels. The concept of
emancipate values was developed by Christian Welzel to measure the beliefs that
people hold about such matters as the importance of personal autonomy, respect
for the choices people make in their personal lives, having a say in community
decisions, and equality of opportunity (Welzel 2013). Welzel’s research, using
data from the World Values Survey, suggests that as economic development
has proceeded, larger numbers of people have tended to adopt emancipative
values in an increasing number of societies. The personal freedom component of
the Fraser Institute’s Human Freedom Index incorporates indicators of
rule of law, security and safety, freedom of movement, freedom of religion,
freedom of association and civil society, freedom of expression and
information, and relationship freedom (Vásquez et al. 2024). Further information relating to the construction of
Figure 2 is also available elsewhere on this blog.
Economic freedom and personal freedom are strongly correlated (Vásquez
et al. 2024, p.26). As
discussed above, that can be partly explained by cultural intermediation.
However, other processes may also be involved. For example, Milton Friedman
suggested that economic freedom “promotes political freedom because it
separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one
to offset the other” (Friedman 1982, p.9).
The outlier data points in Figures 1 and 2 have been labelled to draw
attention to countries that have substantially different economic and personal
freedom ratings than might be predicted from their underlying cultural values.
The historical role played by individual political leaders in bringing
about some of those outcomes is obvious to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge
of the political history of some of the labelled countries, e.g. Venezuela,
Argentina, Iran and China. However, those are all countries with economic
and/or personal freedom ratings substantially lower than might be
predicted by underlying cultural values. It is more difficult to identify the
contributions individual political leaders with institutional outcomes in
countries with greater freedom than might be predicted from underlying cultural
values. For the jurisdictions where that is possible, e.g. Chile and Singapore
(for economic freedom) and Taiwan and South Korea (for personal freedom) the
political leaders who come to mind are not libertarians – they are
authoritarian figures who held power several decades ago.
Similar conclusions about
the influence of political entrepreneurship are obtained by identifying
countries which have experienced greatest change in economic and personal
freedom since 2000. It is generally much easier to identify individual
political entrepreneurs who have contributed to institutional outcomes in
jurisdictions that have experienced the greatest contraction of freedom than in
jurisdictions that have experienced the greatest expansion of freedom (Bates
2025).
It should not be
surprising that it is easier to identify individual political leaders who have
contributed to low or declining freedom ratings. Political leadership in the
countries concerned is, by definition, authoritarian, or becoming increasingly
authoritarian. When governments have relatively high regard for individual
liberty, political entrepreneurship tends to be more subtle, and less focused
on national leaders.
The ideas reflected in
underlying cultures, as represented in Figures1 and 2, clearly account for only
a portion of the ideas (including ideologies) which influence institutional
change. And the power of ideas is not the only factor involved. Interest groups
also seek to change the rules of the game in their favour.
The issue of whether
interests dominate ideas, or vice versa, has been discussed in the past. (See,
for example, Barry 1985.) It is important to emphasize, however, that there are
no automatic mechanisms to translate ideas and interests into institutional
changes. Political entrepreneurs play a crucial role in determining which ideas
and interests have greatest impact on the rules of the game.
The following essay
considers similarities between political and economic entrepreneurship.
References
Barry, Norman.
"Ideas Versus Interests: The Classical Liberal Dilemma” in Hayek's
Serfdom Revisited." Essays by economists, philosophers, and political
scientists on The Road to Serfdom after 40 years (The Centre for
Independent Studies, 1985).
Bates, Winton, (2025) Freedom
and Flourishing: What role has political entrepreneurship played in changes in
human freedom this century?
Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago
Press, 1982).
Inglehart, Ronald,
“Culture and Democracy”, in Culture Matters, edited by Laurence E.
Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (Basic Books, 2000).
Vásquez, Ian, Matthew D.
Mitchell, Ryan Murphy, and Guillermina Sutter, The Human
Freedom Index 2024 (Cato and Fraser Institute, 2024).
Welzel, Christian, Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest
for Emancipation (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
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