Advocacy of a night-watchman state is known as minarchism.

This is meant to be the Lockean "night-watchman state" writ large.

A night-watchman state, or a minimal state, is variously defined by sources.

He called his legitimate state a "night-watchman state."

They thus consider the establishment and maintenance of the night-watchman state supported by Objectivists to be in violation of the non-aggression principle.

Minarchists prefer a minimal or night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud with military, police, and courts.

Lenny, an admirer of the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, argues that only minimal government, characterized as "the night-watchman state," can be justified.

Nozick arrives at the night-watchman state of classical liberalism theory by showing that there are non-redistributive reasons for the apparently redistributive procedure of making its clients pay for the protection of others.

But he immediately makes it clear that his ideal is still the classical liberal night-watchman state: "Government needs to set a clear, predictable regulatory and macroeconomic climate: protecting property rights, enforcing the law, avoiding inflation and, just as important, not taking all the money for itself."

Secondly, we must pay attention to the extension of the activities of the state itself, which results not only from the increasing scale of societies, but also from many other influences that encourage state intervention; and to take a specific example, those influences which effected the transition from a 'night-watchman state' to a 'welfare state'.