I would argue that self governance and personal rights really took hold in the aftermath of the signing of the Magna Carta (1215). One of the most difficult challenges of leading something as complex as a societal group (society) is figuring out how to maintain the cohesiveness of the individual members as a society while balancing the need for structure and personal freedoms.
The anti-federalists in the early stages of the creation of what is now the USA believed the individual freedoms (sovereignty) trumped the importance of the society as a whole. They believed in staunch self reliance and independence. They knew that the moment that their government had enough power to take their property, their rights, or freedoms in turn for safety or security that they would have neither.
The complication with boundless freedom is that it is the same as true democracy where if everyone gets what they want, no one gets what they want. In fact, in order for humans to live peacefully in close proximity they need some type of structure. So the basis for law and order (government) are constructed with the idea of erring on the side of personal freedoms unless those freedoms hurt others. That approach works well as long as everyone has equal sway with the law. The moment that one party has more sway than others the whole thing falls into chaos.
The Federalists in the early USA believed that the way to control squabbling amongst parties would be to create a powerful central government that would set the rules and dictate the way people live to "preserve order". The problem with that idea is that such an approach does not look to fulfill everyone's desires, it picks winners and losers.
A large part of what allows people to lose control of their "say" in their society is when they lose their ability to stand on their own without the need for others.
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