Atlantic Council Reports Rule of Law Fell 2% Since 2020 Across 171 Countries
Updated
Updated · Atlantic Council · Jul 15
Atlantic Council Reports Rule of Law Fell 2% Since 2020 Across 171 Countries
2 articles · Updated · Atlantic Council · Jul 15
Summary
The 2026 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes flag the rule of law as the sharpest new warning sign, with the global Legal Subindex down 1.24 points—about 2%—since 2020.
Political freedom has kept sliding since 2012, while core economic freedom has largely stalled; the report says polarization, populism and institutional conflict are now spilling into courts, legal predictability and public administration.
OECD economies show an especially striking legal decline, with their average Legal Subindex down about 4 percentage points since 2012; the United States lost 4.7 points in the overall Freedom Index in 2025.
Across 171 countries, Denmark ranked first in freedom and Norway first in prosperity, while the report says weak legal systems are a major development constraint in non-OECD economies starting from an average legal score of 50.3 versus 75 in OECD states.
The Atlantic Council says legal institutions are both a threshold and an enabler for prosperity: among non-OECD economies, only 9% of countries in the lowest legal quartile reach the top prosperity quartile.