Why Government Power Must Be Limited

Have you ever thought to yourself: “If only the right people were in power, we could fix everything.” Most people don’t support big government because they love tyranny. They support it because they believe their side will use it wisely. 

Thankfully, government power never stays in the same hands forever. The authorities you give to your allies today will eventually belong to people you disagree with tomorrow. And once governments take on new powers, history shows they rarely give them back.

The question isn’t, then, who is in power, but how much power should the government hold at all?

That’s the foundation for the idea of limited government.

Welcome to lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org’s Learning Hub: An Introduction to Limited Government

Definition: 

Limited government is a political system in which the power of the state is restricted, typically through a constitution that establishes its scope and structure. Its purpose is to prevent the concentration of coercive power and, especially, its arbitrary use against individual rights. 

Limited government does not mean “anti-​government.” The state has one main role: protecting our individual rights, such as life, liberty, and property. In other words, government has been given delegated authority to protect our rights, but it should never be powerful enough to negate them.

Context:

Limited government is one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity, and the struggle to achieve it was a battle of liberty against power. 

Even though these ideas were discussed back in Imperial China and Ancient Greece, for example, a theory of the limits to political power and its embodiment in formal institutions emerged during the Middle Ages in Europe. This was not the product of mere philosophy, but the result of the decentralization of political power after the fall of the Roman Empire. Competing secular and religious authorities ensured that no single power could fully dominate society, helping give rise to the separation of church and state and the idea that even monarchs should face limits to their power.

In premodern Europe, the church was incredibly powerful and affected most aspects of life. Church offices had political and social prerogatives enforced by law, they were immune to taxation while being beneficiaries of their own compulsory taxes, they had courts that could punish religious law crimes, they could expel from the territory those who did not share the state religion, and they could arrest, imprison, torture, and execute religious dissidents. 

During these changes, the authority of the monarch was also questioned. For centuries, kings claimed to rule by divine right, which meant royal power could not be limited or challenged. Over time, this came into conflict with an emerging principle: that rulers, too, should be subject to the law. In England in 1215, the Magna Carta forced King John to accept limits on his authority, including the idea that even the king could not arbitrarily seize property or punish subjects outside the law. Although originally a political settlement between the crown and the nobility, it became one of the clearest symbols of the idea that political power must be constrained. 

In the United States, the founders were careful students of history. When establishing a government independent from British rule, they decided on one with delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers. Their goal was not simply to create a new government, but to ensure that no government could accumulate the kind of unchecked authority they had just escaped. The American experiment in limited government generated an unprecedented level of freedom and prosperity.

Today, this system of limits is preserved through several key institutions. The rule of law ensures that power is bound by clear and general rules that apply equally to everyone. Separation of powers and checks and balances divide authority among different branches of government, so that no single institution can dominate the rest, which in turn are meant to hold each other accountable. And federalism further disperses power by limiting what the federal government can do, leaving the rest to local institutions or the people themselves. 

In this series of Learning Hub videos, we’ll explain each of them. Subscribe so you don’t miss any! 

Why should I care?

Even though modern free societies no longer fight for the separation of church and state, or argue about the divine right of monarchs, they still struggle to define the limits of government power. History repeatedly shows us how easily even well-​intentioned people can support greater concentration of authority, and how difficult it is to reverse once it happens. 

Unlimited power will always be attractive to those in authority or those who seek to impose their will. However, we must remember: the power you give to your allies today will eventually belong to people you disagree with tomorrow. 

Limited government is not a philosophy of one political faction or another. It is the best tool at our disposal to ensure liberty for the individual and prosperity for a society. Free and flourishing societies have never been built on the backs of “good dictators,” but on limiting the institutions that hinder our ability to think, speak, and act according to our conscience, wants, and needs. Freedom survives only when power itself is restrained. 

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