For more than one hundred years, noble concerns have persuaded well-meaning people to favor more government to promote the public interest, and others have exploited those concerns to grab political privileges at public expense. Contrary to conventional thought, however, the history of government expansion provides reasons to believe that the trend can be reversed.

J. R. Clark is the Scott Probasco Professor in Private Enterprise at the University of Tennessee.
Dwight R. Lee is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Affiliated Visiting Faculty Fellow in the Institute for the Study of Political Economy in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University.
EconomyGovernment and PoliticsGovernment PowerLaw and LibertyPolitical TheoryPublic Choice
Other Independent Review articles by J. R. Clark
Summer 2022 Academic Entrepreneurship in Sometimes Hostile Environments: James Buchanan and the Virginia School of Political Economy
Spring 2005 Economic Freedom in the World, 2002
Spring 2004 Global Warming and Its Dangers
Other Independent Review articles by Dwight R. Lee
Summer 2023 Fiscal Recklessness, Path Dependence, and Expressive Voting
Summer 2019 The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy
Spring 2019 The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
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