Disentangling the Culture-Institution Nexus: The Case of Human Empowerment

Abstract

A key trend of modernity is human empowerment — a process that gives ordinary people control over their lives. The trend towards human empowerment is strikingly evident in the expansion of rights, including general and group-specific human rights. There is broad evidence that expanding rights go together with rising emancipative values. But whether emancipative values drive the expansion of rights or vice versa, or whether both are driven by ‘third’ causes, is an unresolved question. In an attempt to resolve it, we use longitudinal data from the World Values Surveys, analysing a reciprocal system of dynamic regressions in both directions of causality and under control of ‘third’ causes — including development, globalization, and contagion. We find that emancipative values and human rights grow in a mutually reinforcing cycle. Once in motion, the cycle’s inner dynamic is not explained by external causes. Inside the cycle, the stronger arrow points from values to rights. This lies in the logic of human empowerment as a process that places people and their values into the driver seat of history.