As the author explains at the beginning of his book, people have never voiced their desires for freedoms so frequently and powerfully as today.

Welzel concludes that institutions themselves cannot create empowering qualities but depend on them so that the source of democracy lies in the people's desire for emancipation.

The Human Empowerment Process is defined by Welzel as a "humanistic transformation of civilization that makes societies increasingly people-powered".

Welzel argues that emancipative values do not guide people's actions as long as existential constraints on human life are strong.

However, freedoms gain utility when people become more capable due to improving living conditions and rising action resources.

[11] Since joint action among capable and motivated people is so difficult to resist, rulers must at some point give in and guarantee the claimed entitlements, and also abide by them.

It establishes the dominant flow of impact among the three elements of the human development process from action resources to emancipative values to civic entitlements.

[12] The sequence thesis implies an important condition, which defies the most common view that human development is caused by institutions.

In contrast to other political scientists like Francis Fukuyama, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Christian Welzel demonstrates that institutions guaranteeing universal freedoms are not the cause but the result of the human empowerment process.

It posits the original source of human empowerment in the cool-water condition (CW-condition), which "is a combination of (1) moderately cold climates, (2) continuous rainfalls over all seasons, and (3) permanently navigable waterways".

Welzel demonstrates that the CW condition prevented a transition to agriculture in the first place since foraging was a freer lifestyle.

Autonomy in market access encouraged a transition to quality-breeding strategies in people's reproductive behavior with the result that the workforce became less numerous but more valuable.

The technological advancement involved more widespread action resources, which enhanced people's capabilities to exercise freedoms.

Welzel stresses that — in the era of globalization — human empowerment begins to diffuse elsewhere and slowly dissociates from the CW condition.