Published by Edgar Elgar
Originally published in Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the institutional foundations of an approach to political theory known as libertarianism. The institutional cornerstone of liberty is a framework of private property rights. However, the concept of private property itself and its inherent link to liberty is often misunderstood. Therefore, this chapter will be motivated by the following question: What is the relationship between the right to private property and a political order based on liberty? I argue that private property is not only the institutional precondition for individual liberty, but the political value that makes possible the realization of other values. Therefore, libertarianism is not necessarily inconsistent with other values, such as equality, justice, or virtue, when properly understood as pertaining to the rules governing social interaction and guiding the discovery of other moral values, rather than about guaranteeing particular social outcomes.