List of Developed Democracies, Freedom House and World Bank Data

List of Developed Democracies
and Why it Matters

By Richard Bruce BA, MA, and PhC in Economics

This is a list of countries that are listed as free by Freedom House and high income or developed by World Bank in 2008. High income countries are considered developed by the World Bank.

List of the 33 Developed Democracies
with Populations Greater than One Million

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Korea (South)
Latvia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Trinidad and Tobago
Taiwan
United Kingdom
United States

Trinidad and Tobago is on this list, but that is because of the recent high price of oil. Trinidad and Tobago have been going from middle income to high income and back for decades.

Why is this Important?
Developed Democracies are Politically, Economically, and Internationally Stable

Why is it important which countries are economically developed democracies? Developed democracies have three important advantages. Dictators can not take over them, their economies do not suffer serious declines, and they do not fight wars with each other. Because of the political and economic stability, once an economically developed democracy always an econmomically developed democracy. Because they never fight wars with one another a world in which all the countries are developed democracies would be a world at peace. So the fact that a country is a developed democracy is important for the people of that nation, they and their children will live in a free and prosperous nation. It is also important to the rest of the world because it is another step toward a long term world peace.

Let us examine this in a little more detail.

Politically Stable

The richer a democracy becomes the less likely that a dictator will be able to take over. Let us look at the history of relatively rich countries that did become dictatorships. Any comparisons between the per capita income of counties many decades in the past and today is dicey, but I have estimated that Argentina may have had a per capita GDP of about 8,000 dollars in 2009 prices the last time the generals took power. Germany was considerbly poorer than that at any time before Hitler took over. For 2009 the World Bank defined high income as 12,196 or higher. That is about 50% higher than Argentina was and probably twice as high as Germany was before they last lost their freedom and perhaps higher than any other country that has lost its freedom. So we can safely say that high income democracies are likely to stay democracies, with one big exception.

Oil rich countries do not follow these rules. They are not necessarily democratic or stable. So it seems very likely that all the countries on the list above will avoid dictatorship with the exception of oil rich Trinidad and Tobago. Not that I am saying Trinidad and Tobago is doomed, I know little about it. I am just saying their success is not as certain.

Economically Stable

I would not be so sure of the political stability if developed democracies were not so economically stable, but they are. Of course, developed democracies can suffer recessions where the income per capita declines a percenage point or two but generally the direction is up, even though about a two percent growth rate is normal for the richer developed democracies in contrast to the much higher growth rates of many developing nations. Furthermore, some developed democracies, Sweden and Finland, have suffered a lost decade of growth but once again no huge declines of the type that might threaten their stability.

Once again oil rich countries are not as stable as countries with broad based exports because the price of oil can rise and fall dramatically. Saudi Arabia is currently a high income country, but it can move from upper middle income to high income and back depending on the price of oil. The same is true of Trinidad and Tobago, which you might note is on the list. It was not on the list in 2005 but I believe it was in some earlier years.

Internationally Stable

It has long been said that the Canadian American border is the longest undefended boarder in the world. One of my high school teachers begged me not to join the foreign service. He warned, "We will have a war with Canada." A nice insult, he was pretty good at that. But it illustrates the point, economically developed democracies do not fight wars against one another.

Actually even developing nations are pretty good at keeping the peace these days. We have come a long way since the Middle Ages when the average country was at war with one of its neighbors in half of all years. On the other hand they did not have nuclear weapons in the Middle Ages. The search for peace takes on a certain urgency with mushroom clouds haunting our nightmares.

Growth of Total Population of the Developed Democracies

The population growth of high income or developed countries is .7 percent a year according to the World Bank. The population growth of the whole world is 1.2 percent. So the First World would be falling behind at something like .5 percent a year if developing nations were not becoming developed democracies. But the addition of many nations in Eastern Europe between 2005 and 2009 has more than made up for slower population growth of the developed democracies.

With future additions like Mexico, Russia, China, and eventually India and most of the rest of the developing nations the population of the developed nations will grow much faster than world population as a whole and I expect most countries to have developed economies some time in the second half of this century. I have a web page on the growth of Third World nations to First World status. here.

Near Misses-High Income and Partially Free

Singapore and Kuwait have high incomes but they are partially free according to Freedom House. Natually lovers of freedom will find this disappointing, but lovers of peace might note that we do not have serious military conflicts with countries that are partially free.

In fact it is normally the countries with the lowest scores, 7, that the United States and the West has difficulties with. This group includes Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria. We also have had difficulties with the next three higher levels, China at 6.5, Iran at 6, and Russia at 5.5.

So if one was just considering the issue of peace, and that is a pretty central issue, one could justify including the partially free.

Upper Middle Income and Freedom

One might also note that freedom is doing fairly well even among the upper middle income countries. In 2009 among 36 upper middle income countries with populations over a million, four have a perfect score of one from Freedom House, eighteen are listed as free, ten are partially free, eight are listed as not free.

Among the 28 countries that did not have a Muslim majority according to the CIA Factbook, four have a perfect score, eighteen are free, six are partially free, and four are not free. So even the upper middle income countries do quite well on the freedom measure if they are not Muslim.

The Muslim countries that are not oil rich, Turkey, Lebanon, Malaysia, and Albania also do fairly well, all of them are partially free. Not ideal in the minds of the West, but probably good enough to maintain peaceful relations. All the oil rich upper middle income majority Muslim nations with more than a million population are not free.

Before you accuse me of being anti-Muslim let me mention that elsewhere on this web site I discuss the magnificent success of Muslims in avoiding AIDS and other venerial diseases and Muslims were very good at avoiding communism. As I have said elsewhere Islam has helped Muslims avoid some of the worst mistakes of Western Civilization, particularly the sexual revolution and communism. Muslims have often thanked me for being fair and even handed in my guest book.

List of Developed Democracies and Why it Matters