Interesting question. I just finished Francis Fukuyama’s Political Order and Political Decay. He argues that rights basically arose from our biology, and are focused on protecting property and preserving that property for offspring. Organizations which grant more rights to constituents, in a Darwinian sense, have a superior chance of surviving than those that don’t. His work shows that such an evolution is slow but over time models which favor absolutism in one form or another die off. It’s a powerful explanation IMHO.
