Fundamentals

Limits on Political Power: What They Are and How They Protect Freedom

By Daniel Sardá · Published on September 26, 2026

7 min read1,358 words

Limiting power does not mean preventing government from acting; it means subjecting public authority to rights, predictable rules, and effective checks.

Political power can make decisions that bind an entire community. It can levy taxes, make rules, impose penalties, and use public force. That capacity is necessary to enforce common rules, but it also raises a decisive question: what prevents those who govern from using those powers for their own convenience?

Limits on political power answer that question. They do not seek to eliminate authority or make collective action impossible. They seek to prevent a person, a majority, or an institution from deciding without defined powers, respect for rights, or the possibility of review.

From a liberal perspective, this is not a secondary matter of administrative design. It is the condition that allows public authority to coexist with individual freedom.

Key idea: A limited government retains the capacity to govern, but it cannot define the full scope of its own powers by itself.

What does it mean to limit political power?

Power is limited when those who hold it must act within powers, procedures, and prohibitions that they cannot remove at will. Authority has a legitimate sphere of action, but it cannot freely dispose of people, their associations, their expression, or their property.

This distinction separates authority from arbitrariness. Authority acts under known rules, gives reasons that can be examined, and answers to some form of oversight. Arbitrariness appears when a decision depends chiefly on the will of the person in command, lacks foreseeable limits, or cannot be effectively challenged.

A constitution can help establish such limits, but its mere existence does not guarantee them. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, constitutionalism is not merely about organizing government: it requires public authority to depend on compliance with meaningful legal constraints. A text that lists institutions but permits power to be concentrated or exercised without control may be constitutional in a formal sense without producing limited government.

Rights: limits on what may be decided

Some limits are substantive: they rule out certain outcomes even when a competent authority or a majority prefers them. Rights serve this function by marking out spheres of freedom that power may not invade without valid justification.

Freedom of expression, association, conscience, and due process, for example, are not concessions that can be withdrawn according to someone’s popularity. They especially protect dissenters and minorities, who cannot rely solely on gathering enough votes to defend themselves. When they are backed by enforceable safeguards, those rights depend on more than a declaration. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires states to respect rights without discrimination and to provide effective remedies for their violation, including violations by public authorities.

This does not mean that every right is absolute or can never be regulated. It means that restricting one requires more than a ruler’s will: a legal basis, a legitimate purpose, a justification open to review, and a way to challenge the decision.

Consider an authority seeking to prevent a public gathering. The question is not only whether the measure seems useful. It also matters whether that authority has the power to adopt it, whether there is a prior and general rule, whether the restriction is necessary and proportionate, and whether those affected can challenge it. These questions turn an order into a decision subject to reasons and limits.

Key idea: A proper procedure does not make every outcome legitimate. Some decisions must remain beyond the reach of power because they violate protected rights.

Rules and procedures: limits on how decisions are made

Other limits are procedural. They determine who may decide, through what process, with what degree of publicity, and under what forms of review. Requiring prior law, an impartial hearing, or a reasoned decision reduces the space for improvised and selective action.

This is where the constitutional rule of law matters. It does not simply mean that laws exist or that a government can point to a rule authorizing its conduct. The Venice Commission identifies legality, legal certainty, prevention of abuse of power, equality before the law, and access to justice among its elements. A rule may have been formally adopted and still grant discretion so broad that people lack real protection.

General and public rules make the consequences of actions easier to anticipate. They also require power to explain why a decision fits the rule and make independent review possible. Predictability does not eliminate every uncertainty, but it reduces dependence on a public official’s favor, exception, or whim.

Distributing power so it can be checked

Limiting power is not only a matter of prohibition. It also requires distributing authority and creating capacities for oversight. Checks commonly work in three directions:

• Horizontal checks operate among branches or bodies of the state through supervision, review, and reciprocal accountability.
• Vertical checks allocate powers across territorial levels of government.
• Social checks arise from citizens, the press, associations, and public opinion.

Checks and balances can make it harder for a single actor to concentrate every decision. But a written separation of functions is not enough. If oversight bodies lack independence, information, or the ability to enforce their decisions, institutional architecture exists only on paper.

Political decentralization does not itself guarantee freedom either. Dispersing authority can bring decisions closer to citizens and create additional checks, but it can also move abuses to the local level. The relevant question is not how many institutions exist, but whether each faces effective limits and can be held accountable.

Judicial review calls for similar caution. Judges can protect rights and review abuses, but they also exercise power. For that reason, they must decide according to defined powers, procedures, and public reasons. The objection that unelected judges may substitute their preferences for those of the majority is serious; the answer is not to declare them infallible, but to place them in a system in which no institution has the final word on everything while itself remaining beyond rules.

Key idea: Dividing power helps only when the parts have real independence, a capacity to check one another, and a duty to account for their decisions.

Democracy does not mean unlimited majority power

Elections are an essential source of democratic legitimacy: they allow people to choose officeholders, replace them, and shape public policy. But winning an election does not authorize a government to cancel rights, neutralize checks, or change the rules to prevent future competition.

Democracy answers the question of who receives authorization to govern. Limited government adds others: what may that authority do, how must it do it, and what protections do those who voted against it retain? Both dimensions need one another. Without competitive elections, power loses a central channel of public accountability; without limits, electoral victory can become a license to dominate.

Nor should we assume that limits always make state action faster. Deliberation, review, and due process impose costs and can delay decisions. Their value lies precisely in requiring the use of power to be justified and in reducing the risk that rights will be sacrificed in the name of urgency or convenience.

Four questions for recognizing limited power

When assessing a public decision, a simple framework can help determine whether authority is acting within legitimate limits:

1. What power is being exercised? The specific power and the person or body holding it should be identifiable.
2. Under what rule? The rule should be prior, public, comprehensible, and applied without arbitrary privilege.
3. Subject to what check? There must be a real avenue for review, challenge, or accountability.
4. Against what right? The decision should be examined for its effects on people’s freedom and safeguards.

These questions do not resolve every political conflict on their own. They do shift the discussion from mere preference—who wants what—to the justification of power: who may do what, why, and under what constraints.

To limit political power is to recognize that authority performs a necessary function, but has no claim superior to people’s dignity and freedom. Rights set boundaries; rules make public action predictable; checks distribute and review decisions. When these elements work together, governing ceases to be issuing commands without answer and becomes the exercise of a responsibility subject to reasons.