Fighting for a Free Future is pleased to introduce a new series for Voices for a Free Future: Prospects for Liberty Around the World. Each month, FFF Associate Luke Lucas will examine how liberty is developing across all corners of the globe and report to us on areas of hope, even from some unexpected places!
Today, Fighting for a Free Future hosted our event, Prospects for Liberty under This New Government, which is a great time to launch our new series on Prospects for Liberty Around the World.
Freedom House, a US-based non-profit and nonpartisan organisation that monitors political rights and civil liberties across the world, has recorded twenty consecutive years of declining global freedom. And this has been backed up by the Cato Institute, which found global human freedom fell from 6.97/10 in 2019 to 6.81 in 2023, with nearly 90% of the world’s population living somewhere that became less free over that period.
In 2026, Freedom House ranked the UK 92/100; however, just one decade ago in 2016, we scored 95. One explanation for this gradual erosion can be found in executive aggrandisement. The House of Lords Delegated Powers Committee warned in 2021 of a “potentially serious threat” to effective parliamentary scrutiny and called for the power between Parliament and the executive to be reset. In July 2026, the same committee said the current government was relying too heavily on Henry VIII powers, which allow ministers to amend legislation through secondary legislation, and “skeleton bills” where important policy details are left for ministers to determine later with reduced parliamentary scrutiny.
This matters because liberty depends not merely on who is exercising political power, but on the constraints placed upon its exercise. Parliament exists partly to scrutinise, challenge and constrain the executive. When law-making authority is gradually removed from Parliament to ministers, decision-making becomes easier but harder to scrutinise. No individual measure will transform Britain into an illiberal state, but the greater danger is the gradual normalisation of powers which weaken institutions designed to constrain the government.
In expressing its political powers, Britain has been marked down by Freedom following increased surveillance powers and successive legislation expanding restrictions on protest. We teeter on the tightrope of populism, not quite committing, but a stern political demand that institutions embody the “will of the people”, which removes their independence.
But despite this global trend, a new tranche of liberalism has emerged throughout Latin America. Despite being historically associated with military dictatorships, populism and state-directed economics, it is once again experimenting with the language of free markets, private property and limited governance. Not just in Argentina, though. Chile has José Antonio Kast; Bolivia has Rodrigo Paz; Ecuador has Daniel Noboa; Paraguay has Santiago Peña; and Peru is now governed by Keiko Fujimori. In just a few years, the region has substantially changed its political direction.
Just last month, in August, the Chilean Congress approved a sweeping reform package from Kast consisting of 36 laws and 15 decrees that aims to revive growth by cutting corporate tax and creating incentives for investment. His government aims to boost growth through tax reductions and deregulation. Bolivia is more interesting after two decades of Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism). Paz took office in 2025, and his government has been pursuing an Investment Law designed to attract private capital. This is a historic shift away from a state-centred model through a more competitive tax regime with reduced state control of energy and mining.
This should not be mistaken for a continental shift to the political right; these governments differ significantly in their approaches to individual liberty. What is significant about these elections is their renewed willingness to question the economic role of the state. Across that continent, privatisation, deregulation, lower taxation and private taxation have returned to the political debate after years of economic planning based around state intervention.
Voters in South America are choosing elements of economic liberalism, but in communist Cuba, economic reality is forcing elements of economic liberalism on the government. On 18th June Cuba’s National Assembly approved 176 economic and social reforms across 23 strategic areas. Cuba has spent nearly 7 decades trying to organise economic life through the state, just to find that 67 years after Castro’s revolution, a government established through Marxist revolution has now found itself authorising private banks, private investment, private employment and privatisation. However, Cuba hasn’t wholly transitioned to a market economy. It remains politically authoritarian as state discretion remains extensive.
All these examples demonstrate that not only does liberty not come in a neat and tidy package, but it’s also not lost in a neat and tidy package. Cuba can liberalise its economy whilst remaining politically authoritarian, South American governments can create free markets without becoming socially liberal, and Britain can remain one of the world’s freest democracies whilst gradually expanding the powers of its executive.
The irony of 2026 seems to be that the societies who have always championed Freedom are debating new limits on it whilst those defined by hostility to markets and individual autonomy are beginning to rediscover the beauty of Freedom. The prospects for liberty are weaker than at any point in a generation, but this decline is not permanent; it can be reversed. The more important divide is increasingly between states in which institutions constrain political power and those in which political power has learned to constrain institutions.
Luke Lucas is a Fighting for a Free Future Associate. He runs Voices for a Free Future’s column, What is Happening in Argentina!, and Principles for a Free Society series,
Another excellent addition Luke. Thank you.
Extremely useful to get the global perspective on this subject.
A very neat and tidy article 😂