What is the difference between State and Institutional, in this context? The difference could be highly significant and combining them could give a very distotrted view of the nation itself.
How is the relative freedom actually measured, in any quantitative way?
There was a simple illustration this very morning on BBC Radio Four's current-affairs programme Today; before I came here, by chance. A propo the resignation of a University of Cambridge professor (not a lecturer, a professor) facing investigations into plagiarism and other dishonesty, the item interviewed another academic who had been forced out of a past role merely by people who did not agree with certain of her social views.
Hers was not the only case of self-appointed, self-important censors trying to silence opinions in such ways, in organisations that are supposed to uphold intelligence, knowledge, opinion and discussion.
I do not know who had bullied her, nor if she resigned under unofficial pressure or was dismissed as an employee; but in the UK either case would be an Institutional, not State, matter.
Further, I would not describe resignation under pressure by peers and/or students as "institutional"; although question the apparent lack of support for the victim by the employing institution.
So overall, although the map's deepest-red nations are tyrannies we might expect to exert tight State control - Russia, Myanmar, China, Saudi Arabia, etc - we cannot draw sensible conclusions about the condition of academic freedom in the democratic nations.
Note that the map' averaging places the USA as not much better than Afghanistan - but in the latter, the State wilfully denies half the population any academia beyond the rudimentary "Three Rs".
@SnickersDOM That Spain re-established its monarchy after the end of Franco's regome, is not relevant to the subject. Modern European monarchs are Heads of State, not absolute rulers.
However, assuming the statistics are reliable although their question flawed, it is an interesting comparison.
