Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation

This book presents a comprehensive theory of why human freedom gave way to increasing oppression since the invention of states - and why this trend began to reverse itself more recently, leading to a rapid expansion of universal freedoms and democracy. Drawing on a massive body of evidence, the author tests various explanations of the rise of freedom, providing convincing support of a well-reasoned theory of emancipation. The study demonstrates multiple trends toward human empowerment, which converge to give people control over their lives. Most important among these trends is the spread of "emancipative values," which emphasize free choice and equal opportunities. The author identifies the desire for emancipation as the origin of the human empowerment trend and shows when and why this desire grows strong; why it is the source of democracy; and how it vitalizes civil society, feeds humanitarian norms, enhances happiness, and helps redirect modern civilization toward sustainable development.


About the Author
Welzel, Christian: - Christian Welzel is Chair of Political Culture Research at the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany, and President of the World Values Survey Association. He is also special foreign consultant to the Laboratory of Comparative Social Research at the Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg, Russia, and a permanent affiliate of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine. A repeated recipient of large-scale grants from the German Science Foundation, Welzel is the author of more than one hundred scholarly publications in high ranking peer-reviewed journals in sociology, political science and psychology. His recent books include Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy (with Ronald Inglehart, Cambridge, 2005), Democratization (with Christian Haerpfer, Patrick Bernhagen and Ronald Inglehart, 2009) and The Civic Culture Transformed: From Allegiant to Assertive Citizens (with Russell J. Dalton, Cambridge, 2014).