Editing Freedom House (section)

=== Academic commentary ===
According to one study, Freedom House's rankings "overemphasize the more formal aspects of democracy while failing to capture the informal but real power relations and pathways of influence ... and frequently lead to de facto deviations from democracy."<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last1=Erk |first1=Jan |last2=Veenendaal |first2=Wouter |date=2014 |title=Is Small Really Beautiful?: The Microstate Mistake |url=http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/journal_of_democracy/v025/25.3.erk.html |journal=Journal of Democracy |language=en |volume=25 |issue=3 |pages=135–148 |doi=10.1353/jod.2014.0054 |issn=1086-3214 |s2cid=155086258}}</ref> States can therefore "look formally liberal-democratic but might be rather illiberal in their actual workings"<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Veenendaal |first=Wouter P. |date=2015-01-02 |title=Democracy in microstates: why smallness does not produce a democratic political system |journal=Democratization |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=92–112 |doi=10.1080/13510347.2013.820710 |issn=1351-0347 |s2cid=145489442}}</ref>

Academic Wenfang Tang observes that Freedom House reports use criteria developed by Western elites.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Tang |first=Wenfang |url=https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/vx021h696 |title=China as Number One? The Emerging Values of a Rising Power |last2= |first2= |date=2024 |publisher=[[University of Michigan Press]] |isbn=978-0-472-07635-2 |editor-last=Zhong |editor-first=Yang |series=China Understandings Today series |location=Ann Arbor, Michigan |chapter=Democratic Authoritarianism: A Study of Chinese Political Orientations |format=EPUB |editor-last2=Inglehart |editor-first2=Ronald |editor-last3=}}</ref>{{Rp|page=77}}

A study comparing Freedom House rankings with the [[World Values Survey]] data measuring respondent's perceptions of freedom in their countries found no statistically significant correlation between the Freedom House measures of freedom and subjective feelings of freedom.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|pages=78-79}} According to Tang, Freedom House rankings exaggerate the differences between liberal and non-liberal countries, observing for example that Freedom House scores China near zero, but Chinese survey respondents report a higher level of freedom than do survey respondents in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|pages=79-80}} Tang also observes that Freedom House's rating of China as a near zero for human rights conflicts with the seventh wave (2017-2022) World Values survey data indicating that 72% of Chinese are satisfied with the state of human rights in their country.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|pages=82-84}}