Freedom Rising
Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation

13th Jan 2014 by Cole

Freedom Rising is a truly exceptional book, indeed a magnum opus of a groundbreaking sort. The strengths of this widely inter-disciplinary work--which draws from insights in economics, sociology, political science, and psychology--lie in both theory and evidence, a combination that one rarely sees. Freedom Rising provides a compelling narrative of the circumstances under which the human desire for freedoms awakes and rises to a powerful force in a society’s history, and when this does not happen. As this work shows with impressive evidence from societies around the globe and over a wide time horizon, the circumstances that unleash people’s yearning for freedoms are the same that determine where democracy flourishes and where it does not. These circumstances also explain why mass-based democracy is a relatively late invention in history but turned out as a success model ever since. What are these circumstances? Freedom Rising Chapter 1 “A Theory of Emancipation,” pp. 37-56 argues that a latent desire for freedoms hibernates in all humans. The source of this desire is a gift that is universal to our species: imagination. Inescapably, imagination involves us dreaming of a life that we can live as we wish, free from domination p. 49. What varies is how much this desire guides people’s actions and life strategies. Where most people lack the resources that one needs to pursue desired activities, they do not see much use in guarantees of universal freedoms. The simple reason is that guarantees for freedoms have little utility when people lack the “action resources” that they need to take advantage of such guarantees. These action resources include various things, most notably material means, intellectual skills and connective opportunities pp. 45-46. Throughout history, most people lacked these action resources: they were poor, illiterate and disconnected from the world beyond their local community. The persistence of this Malthusian condition explains why mass-based democracy remained unknown over most of history. Beginning with the rise of pre-industrial capitalism, continuing with the Industrial Revolution and accelerating with the emergence of postindustrial knowledge societies, we see a game change in history. Tyranny, even though it continues to exist, is no longer safe. In fact, tyranny is increasingly challenged, as the global accumulation of nonviolent mass insurrection over recent decades clearly demonstrates cf. Chapter 7 “Collective Action,” pp. 215-246. And the reason is that increasing population segments in societies around the world escape poverty, gain access to education and can connect to like-minded others at any place see the evidence in Figure I.1, p. 4 of the Introduction. Indeed, fundamental improvements—from better material conditions to longer life expectancies to broader education and information—turn the lives of growing population segments from a source of threats into a source of opportunities. Envisioning longer and more promising lives, people increasingly insist on actually living their lives, and living them the way they themselves prefer and agree with each other. This tectonic cultural shift is visible in rising “emancipative values”: an emerging emphasis on universal freedoms Chapter 4 “Tracing Change,” pp. 140-170. In a very principled fashion, Freedom Rising condenses these well-documented arguments into a single root principle--the utility ladder of freedoms pp. 2, 37, 403-406. When growing shares of the population gain access to action resources, entire societies ascend the utility ladder of freedoms: in an objective sense, universal freedoms gain utility when more people acquire the capabilities to handle these freedoms. This has far-reaching psychological consequences. Evolution has shaped human cognition to recognize opportunities because this ability is essential to master life pp. 50-52. Hence, people recognize a gain in the objective utility of freedoms and adjust their subjective values accordingly: they begin to value the freedoms which they see they are able to handle. This utility-value link is vital to human functioning because it keeps our lives in touch with reality. The utility ladder of freedoms addresses a social utility function: the ladder originates in socially shared rather than individually unique utilities pp. 51-52. The reason is that universal freedoms are a reciprocal good. Reciprocal goods flourish through mutual recognition: because universal freedoms always include the freedoms of others, one supports these freedoms more easily if others reciprocate the favor and also support one’s own freedoms. Such mutual recognitions in turn are more likely when action resources are widespread because then people have joint utilities from universal freedoms. Jointly valued freedoms create solidarities—a continuous source of collective pressures to guarantee and respect freedoms. When large population segments have gained access to action resources and have embraced emancipative values, the game for those in power changes profoundly. Elites are now confronted with mass publics whose members are both capable and eager to join forces and take action in pursuit of guaranteed freedoms. Denying guarantees therefore becomes an increasingly costly and eventually an unsustainable option. This is the moment when democratic freedoms are most likely to be firmly established and to be effectively respected in the daily practice of power. Chapter 9 “The Rights Revolution,” pp. 278-306 presents impressive evidence from societies around the world and covering various decades in support of these arguments. However, Freedom Rising emphasizes that not all mass upheavals are driven first and foremost by a desire for democratic freedoms. In the past and today, many mass insurrections are collective outbreaks of frustration about the policy failures of corrupt rulers. Even when such upheavals voice democracy as their goal, this does not necessarily mean that they are driven by a desire for democratic freedoms. The uncorrupt but strong leader who rules with an iron fist is still a widely popular idea, especially where existential pressures continue to block the rise of emancipative values. And wherever people voice support for democracy in dissociation from emancipative values, this is where such mass support regularly coexists with serious deficiencies and even the absence of democracy cf. Figure 8.8, p. 276, Figure 9.1, p. 284, Figure 10.6, p. 329. By contrast, where mass support for democracy is solidly grounded in emancipative values, democratic deficiencies are already minimal or are shrinking under the pressure of social movements and critical media. Widely shared emancipative values create a solidarity base that helps to overcome collective action dilemmas Chapter 7, “Collective Action,” pp. 215-246. One reason for this is that shared and deeply internalized values embody “expressive utility”: actions that voice widely shared values generate feelings of belongingness—which is a powerful source of satisfaction, even if the voiced demands are often not fulfilled. Merely voicing a claim in whose justification one deeply believes in unison with like-minded others, is in and by itself an act of emancipation. Expressive utility is therefore an especially strong property of emancipative values. For this reason, Freedom Rising finds that even high risks of repression cannot eradicate the tendency of emancipative values to trigger the voicing of joint claims pp. 233-239. In light of this tendency, emancipative values provide a powerful source of social capital. Freedom Rising takes considerable effort to demonstrate that these propositions and insights do not prescribe a Western-bound view of the world. Emancipative values also exist outside the Western world and the mechanisms that feed them operate in similar fashion in non-Western societies pp. 74-79. For instance, expanding education and other instances of cognitive mobilization have a profound effect on the rise of emancipative values in East Asia cf. Figure 3.2, p. 209. A key conclusion from this finding is that the Chinese model of development—pursuing modernization whilst denying its emancipatory consequences--will sooner or later hit a hard ceiling at which the party leaders are forced to make a decision: whether to stop modernization or to initiate democratization. At the local level, more democratic freedoms are already practiced in China and it remains to be seen whether and when this process spills over to higher political layers. When freedoms grow, this is an inherently emancipatory process that advances human empowerment on a mass-scale. If it advances, human empowerment reaches over three domains of social reality: existential conditions, psychological orientations and institutional regulations pp. 45-47. In the domain of existential conditions, spreading action resources enhance people’s capability to practice freedoms. This is instrumental empowerment. In the domain of psychological orientations, rising emancipative values strengthen people’s willingness to practice freedoms. This is motivational empowerment. And in the domain of institutional regulations, improving civic entitlements extend people’s permission to practice freedoms. This is legal empowerment. Together, these three partial empowerments complete human empowerment. This happens in a sequence from resources to values to entitlements. In other words, action resources give rise to emancipative values which together with action resources then feed pressures for civic entitlements. Institutions are, thus, more often the outcome than the beginning of an empowerment sequence. Historically this seems obvious because desires for civic entitlements emerged under the very denial of these entitlements rather than having been created by their presence. In line with this interpretation, Freedom Rising probes into extensive temporal order analyses to demonstrate that earlier action resources explain later emancipative values and earlier emancipative values explain later civic entitlements much better than the other way round pp. 154-166, see especially Figure 4.5, p. 162. Chapter 11 of Freedom Rising, titled “The Great Redirection” pp. 335-375 presents a particularly broad analysis. The arguments and evidence are so far-reaching that one could almost consider them as a whole new theory of civilization. The chapter reasons that there is no iron law guaranteeing human empowerment to progress. At any point, external shocks can reverse the process. Yet, the latency of the desire for emancipation silently guides human efforts towards more rather than less freedoms—as much as external circumstances allow. In this sense, humans are evolutionary “programmed” to work upward the utility ladder of freedoms. In spite of this latent ascendance orientation, civilization has entrapped people over centuries and millennia in self-sustaining cycles of disempowerment. Entrapped in mass-scale disempowerment, no one—except perhaps members of the thin hereditary elite—controlled abundant action resources, no one was driven by strong emancipative values and no one benefited from extensive civic entitlements. Indeed, history took a turn towards these emancipatory achievements very late. Before the breakthrough into the industrial age, no society could have been described as advanced in terms of mass-scale human empowerment. In most places where urban civilization took root, ordinary people were poor, subservient and disciplined by overlords. Even today, emancipatory gains show a highly discriminant geographical pattern, as Freedom Rising demonstrates with massive evidence. Indeed, the populations of the world with widespread action resources, broadly shared emancipative values and abundant civic entitlements concentrate in what the book calls the “Cool Water” CW environments in North America, Western Europe, Australia/New Zealand and Japan/South Korea. These environments combine fairly low average annual temperatures with continuous rainfall over all seasons and the presence of permanently navigable waterways. But what is so special about these CW-features? Interestingly, areas with these CW-features lagged behind in the evolution of civilization for a long time but then it was in these areas where the breakthrough into the industrial age happened and where the emancipatory turn in history started pp. 353-356. This puzzling pattern raises two questions: 1 Why did the CW-areas lag behind so long in the civilization process? 2 Why did the CW-areas at one point take off and redirect civilization towards emancipatory outcomes? Freedom Rising answers the first question by location. On the continent where humanity adopted advanced agriculture first—Eurasia--the CW-features are most pronounced at the Northwestern and Northeastern flanks, culminating in Northwestern Europe and Japan. As Chapter 11 shows, on a CW-index with a theoretical maximum of 1.0, these two areas have a score of around .90 see the stunning Figure 11.1 at p. 342. No other civilization reached more than half of that score and in most cases the scores are much lower. However, located at the Eurasian fringes Northwestern Europa and Japan were placed at a large distance from the early centers of agriculture, which stretch over the sub-tropical belt from the Mediterranean to China. This had a double consequence. On the one hand, the diffusion of advanced agriculture and urban civilization from its early centers reached Northwestern Europe and Japan late. On the other hand, these areas were shielded from the foreign imposition of despotism by Eurasia’s recurrent land empires--an important difference to areas in Northwestern Russia and Northeastern China where the CW-features are present to some degree though not quite as pronounced as in Northwestern Europe and Japan. At any rate, Northwestern Europe’s and Japan’s geo-strategic fringe location allowed them to take plenty of inspiration from the more advanced civilizations in their vicinity while being able to process these inspirations in their own, autonomous ways. Indeed, the data presented in Freedom Rising show that the flank civilizations adopted agriculture millennia after the older civilizations of the Middle East, India, China and the Mediterranean. Likewise, Freedom Rising documents evidence suggesting that levels of urbanization known from the older civilizations since long haven’t been reached in Northwestern Europe before the 15th century CE and in Japan before 17th century CE p. 345. The overseas CW-areas were even more isolated: no advanced agrarian societies were in the vicinity of the Northern coastal areas of today’s US, the southern coastal areas of today’s Canada, the Southern tips of South America and Africa or the Southeast of Australia/Tasmania and New Zealand. In fact, advanced agriculture did not emerge in the overseas CW-areas until settlers from the European CW-areas imported it. Inspired by achievements of more advanced civilizations in the vicinity but shielded from the foreign imposition of despotism, Northwestern Europe and Japan eventually developed their own versions of urban civilization. Even though this happened late, once it did a key feature of the CW-environment began 1 to accelerate development and 2 to redirect it towards emancipatory outcomes. The key feature in question is that this environment favors plural autonomies pp. 357-359. The origin of this favor lies in the fact that the regular precipitation in CW-environments makes fresh water permanently accessible to everyone. And the cold temperatures of CW-environments make fresh water a safer resource by lowering its infestation. Water access is a root existential autonomy whose presence closes a historic route to despotism: centralized control over water supply. Existential autonomy orients groups towards the assertion and defense of derivative autonomies, including control over their produce. Ingrained autonomy orientations provide a continuous source of resistance against power concentrations and, hence, feed a pluralistic power structure. With such a structure in place, competing local, regional and national rulers must grant concessions in return for the tributes they wish to take. In line with this interpretation, Freedom Rising

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