The 2006 State of World Liberty Index ranks countries from most to least libertarian by compiling information from four freedom indices into one single index. The indices used were:
The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal, the Frasier Institute/Cato Institute, Freedom House, Reporters without Borders. The countries were broken into three criteria: individual freedom, economic freedom and government size/taxation and averaged. According to the index, the freest region is Europe whole the freest country is Estonia. "The world is not free," the experts say. The world receives a failing score of 56.9% out of 100.

The mangled corpse of the Soviet Union is stretched across the list, with the Baltic states of Estonia (#1), Lithuania (#16) and Latvia (#21) all making the top 25 after embracing free market liberalism, while their neighbor Belarus (#153) and the Asian countries Turkmenistan (#154) and Uzbekistan (#152) dangle in the bottom ten. Armenia (#79), Russia (#124), Kazakhstan (#132), Tajikistan (#141) and Azerbaijan (#137) are also struggling in a post-Soviet world.

North Korea is at the bottom of this list, with a score of 6.2%.