night-watchman state Concepts

The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

by Tim Wu · 4 Nov 2025 · 246pp · 65,143 words

political rivals to literal or figurative crocodiles. Part IV An Architecture of Equality One popular vision of the ideal state, particularly among libertarians, is the “night watchman” state, whose main duty is to uphold basic rights against incursion but do little else. That typically means protecting public safety, providing defense against foreign attack

Anarchy State and Utopia

by Robert Nozick · 15 Mar 1974 · 524pp · 146,798 words

some persons paid more so that others could be protected. And indeed the most minimal state seriously discussed by the mainstream of political theorists, the night-watchman state of classical liberal theory, appears to be redistributive in this fashion. Yet how can a protection agency, a business, charge some to provide its product

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short of being a state. But these appearances are deceptive. CHAPTER 3 Moral Constraints and the State THE MINIMAL STATE AND THE ULTRAMINIMAL STATE THE night-watchman state of classical liberal theory, limited to the functions of protecting all its citizens against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of contracts, and

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on, appears to be redistributive.1 We can imagine at least one social arrangement intermediate between the scheme of private protective associations and the night-watchman state. Since the night-watchman state is often called a minimal state, we shall call this other arrangement the ultraminimal state. An ultraminimal state maintains a monopoly over all use

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those who purchase its protection and enforcement policies. People who don’t buy a protection contract from the monopoly don’t get protected. The minimal (night-watchman) state is equivalent to the ultraminimal state conjoined with a (clearly redistributive) Friedmanesque voucher plan, financed from tax revenues.f Under this plan all people, or

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in need), are given tax-funded vouchers that can be used only for their purchase of a protection policy from the ultraminimal state. Since the night-watchman state appears redistributive to the extent that it compels some people to pay for the protection of others, its proponents must explain why this redistributive function

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we think it does so. Returning stolen money or compensating for violations of rights are not redistributive reasons. I have spoken until now of the night-watchman state’s appearing to be redistributive, to leave open the possibility that nonredistributive types of reasons might be found to justify the provision of protective services

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L. Melamed. emethodological individualism Michelman, F. middlemen minimal state inspiring nonneutral reduces manipulation of state to justify and ultra minimal state and utopia See also night-watchman state; ultraminimal state; dominant protective association Minogue, K. Mises. Mishan, E. J money, invisible hand explanation of Monopoly and protective services monopoly on force: condemned by

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task for See also constraints, moral-side Nagel, E. natural rights. Hart’s argument for and risk the tradition on procedural rights Nelson. Newman, P night-watchman state See also minimal state nonneutral state normative sociology Nozick, R Oppenheimer, F opting out organic principle original position: and arbitrariness of natural assets embodies process

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(nonaggressive) actions, the constraints they impose require justification. At no point does our argument assume any background institutions more extensive than those of the minimal night-watchman state, a state limited to protecting persons against murder, assault, theft, fraud, and so forth. ap Is the patterned principle stable that requires merely that a

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State

by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge · 14 May 2014 · 372pp · 92,477 words

’s idea of a professional civil service selected by exam, attacked cronyism, opened up markets, and restricted the state’s rights to subvert liberty. The “night-watchman state,” advanced by the likes of John Stuart Mill, was both smaller and more competent. Even though the size of the British population rose by nearly

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would later dub “negative liberty.” But where did that leave Leviathan? To begin with, Mill thought the answer was easy: a minimal, noninterfering state—the “night-watchman state” (a phrase that he never used but that sums up his attitude). But as he grew older, he began to have second thoughts. Wasn’t

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as Herbert Asquith, the future Liberal prime minister, and R. H. Tawney, one of the most influential intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s. Suddenly the night-watchman state was the relic of an earlier age, and the Prussian Reich the measure of all things modern. Historians like to explain this change primarily in

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party would prove to be unaffordable: Barry Goldwater fought the 1964 election in America on a platform of cutting government and returning it to the night-watchman state of John Stuart Mill: “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size,” the

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astonishingly bold for the big-government Kennedy years: from the abolition of farm subsidies and the minimum wage to the elimination of border controls. The night-watchman state had been reinvented for the age of the Grateful Dead. How did a man with such extreme views become such a hit? Partly because his

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Western countries and unashamedly elitist, even a little royalist. The Lees look like Leviathan personified. But there is some Mill too. Singapore is a tiny night-watchman state that provides people with the opportunities that they need to rise and then leaves them to sort out their own welfare: Provided that they do

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, 99 Newnham College, 58 New Republic, 71 New Statesman, 67 Newsweek, 86 New York Daily News, 227 New Zealand, 239 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 265 Nigeria, 234 night-watchman state, 7, 9, 48, 61, 80, 86, 101, 136, 140, 181, 232 1984 (Orwell), 71 Nixon, Richard, 77 Nobel Prize, 82, 86, 91 Nock, Albert Jay

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economic success of, 135 as elitist, 135, 136, 138–39 ethnic tensions in, 139–40 as model for Asian state, 4, 17, 134, 142 as night-watchman state, 140 small government of, 135, 140 social insurance model of, 140–41, 242, 243 social safety net in, 140 Singh, Manmohan, 96 Sloan, Alfred, 189

Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

by Cass R. Sunstein · 6 Mar 2018 · 434pp · 117,327 words

smaller and simpler state than it is to commandeer one of today’s sprawling bureaucracies. I commonly hear arguments from classical liberals suggesting that a “night watchman state,” or some slightly expanded version thereof, provides government with greater efficacy and focus. If government is concentrating on its essential functions, and what it can

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy

by Dani Rodrik · 23 Dec 2010 · 356pp · 103,944 words

of the global economy, we have observed in this book how these transformations occur. Adam Smith’s idealized market society required little more than a “night-watchman state.” All that governments needed to do to ensure the division of labor was to enforce property rights, keep the peace, and collect a few taxes

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It

by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge · 1 Sep 2020 · 134pp · 41,085 words

mad by describing them as “the stupid party.” He wanted to get rid of all barriers to self-fulfillment. He became associated with a minimal “night-watchman state” (he never used this expression, but it stuck), where the only justification for the state interfering in people’s lives was to prevent them from

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hated being called a conservative. He saw himself squarely in the tradition of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. In 1964, his vision of a night-watchman state was embraced by the Republican presidential nominee: “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce

The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy

by Diane Coyle · 29 Oct 1998 · 49,604 words

, the failure of mainstream politicians to acknowledge that the world is a different place has handed those in favour of free markets and a minimal, night watchman state easy victories. For there is no question that in an increasingly weightless world, with a dramatic increase in the scale and scope of uncertainty, markets

The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters

by Diane Coyle · 21 Feb 2011 · 523pp · 111,615 words

even the most ardent “free marketeer” would accept the need for a minimum set of basic government functions. It’s usually referred to as the “night watchman state.” Many people, most probably, believe that rather more than the night watchman minimum is needed. In fact, once you get away from the extreme positions

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

by Jamie Susskind · 3 Sep 2018 · 533pp

spending and determined what people earned, what was produced, and at what price. At the other end of the spectrum were those who supported a ‘night watchman state’ that did as little regulating and spending as possible. There are a range of options between these poles. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown

by Philip Mirowski · 24 Jun 2013 · 662pp · 180,546 words

not at all the same as rejecting “The State” tout court.35 That is because mature neoliberalism is not at all enamored of the minimalist night-watchman state of the classical liberal tradition: its major distinguishing characteristic is instead a set of proposals and programs to infuse, take over, and transform the strong