The Sources of Constraints

Restrictions on an individual's freedom can come from domination and external control. Such restrictions may be imposed by force, or through laws made by rulers backed by the power of the state — this was exactly the form constraint took under colonial rule, or under the system of apartheid in South Africa. Some form of government is probably unavoidable in any society, but if that government is a democratic one, its members retain some control over their own rulers — which is why democratic government is considered an important safeguard of people's freedom.

Constraints on freedom can also grow out of social inequality that is built into a society's own structure — of the kind implicit in the caste system, or the kind that results from extreme economic inequality between the rich and the poor. …