Final visuals: Freedom and its drivers

Throughout this projects, we have attempted to answer the question of which the drivers of freedom are, and how they have evolved over time. We have tried to disclose the intertwine between socioeconomic and political factors, and uncover whatever underlying patterns there are.

Below is a video of out final visualizations, showcasing our findings:

Visuals and insights:

• Political Rights rating (R Shiny): plotted for Europe, it allows to observe this index from 1 (highest freedom) to 7 (least free)

• Tree map (R Shiny): shows proportions of countries that belong to a certain range of Political Rights Rating

• Time series for GDP: allows for comparing this index over time between different countries

• Women in power: allows to observe the proportion of women in Parliament for the year 2020, and their respective Political Rights Rating; the trend is for countries with more women to have more freedom

• Gini Index: bar chart that allows comparison of European countries’ Gini Index (from 0 to 100, being 0 perfect income equality and 100 perfect inequality), and their respective political freedom; there seems to be a slight trend towards higher freedom when inequality is lower, although not so clear since European countries tend to have lower indexes compared to the rest of the world

• Radar Chart (D3): it groups countries’ Political Freedom rating, this time using Fraser Institute’s index (0 being lowest freedom, 100 being highest) in ranges of 10; for each range, one can visualize their average scores on Economic Freedom factors (being five in total); there seems to be correlation between political and economic freedom

This journey has not only allowed for potential insights, but has also shown us the power of visualizations for shedding light on relevant patterns for interesting questions.