The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis

Abstract This article demonstrates that socioeconomic development, emancipative cultural change and democratization constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress – a syndrome whose common focus has not been properly specified by classical modernization theory. We specify this syndrome as ‘human development’, arguing that its three components have a common focus on broadening human choice. Socioeconomic development gives people the objective means of choice by increasing individual resources ; rising emancipative values strengthen people's subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization provides legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights . Analysis of data from the World…