The idea that a ruler or government has absolute or total power. This implies that no other persons, groups, or institutions have power. Examples of absolutism include absolute monarchs like King Louis XIV of France, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler of Germany, and Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin. In each case, the absolutist leader is not limited or restrained by any other individual or power. Limits on an absolutist ruler or government might come from (1) other people with power who counteract the ruler's authority; (2) legal or constitutional limits on a ruler's power; (3) other institutions or groups (political parties, the church, labor unions) who challenge the absolute power of the state. This is why most absolutist leaders and governments make all other people and institutions dependent on them. So in Nazi Germany, the Boy Scouts became The Hitler Youth; in Communist Russia, the Boy Scouts became the Communist Youth League. All private social organizations (clubs, fraternities, churches) become attached to the state and under its control. A main writer on absolutism, Thomas Hobbes, argues that the state must have absolute control of individuals, property, information, and police to prevent anarchy and chaos. Other arguments in favor of an absolutist state include Divine Right of Kings (which says that God has placed a certain person or family in power as his representative on earth); the Communist dictatorship of the proletariat (in which the working class or its representative party rules with absolute power to accomplish economic socialism); Fascist nationalism (as in Nazi Germany where racial purity is achieved by a certain "pure" [Aryan] leader). In each of these cases, the absolute ruler is not restrained by law, other rulers, custom, or God. In actual fact, most of these absolute governments were limited by some other social groups or forces (the social elite, businesses, the church, or, ultimately, military defeat by other nations).

Historically, the concept of an absolutist state occurs in the early Modern period (1600-1700s) in reaction to the monarchs in France, Germany, Russia, and Britain. These monarchies of the Middle Ages asserted their absolute authority as their actual power was declining with the rise of industrialism, republican government, and the middle class. Sir Robert Filmer in England and Bishop Bossuet in France argued that kings were God's vice regents—to be given absolute respect and obedience. The rule of these divine kings was considered always just and good for the whole society. During the Middle Ages (A.D. 500-1500) the Roman Catholic Church in Europe and the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia tended to support this view of absolute authority of the king (or czar) under the ultimate authority of God. With the rise of modern Republicanism (in Parliament in England and the Estates General in France), absolutism was challenged with the ideals of popular sovereignty of the governed and the rule of law.

The U.S. Constitution with its system of checks and balances, which deliberately divides power among different branches and levels of government, is a direct response to absolutist government. From Puritan thinkers John Locke and John Calvin, whose teachings influenced the founding of the U.S. Constitution, came a suspicion of human nature as inherently sinful and domineering. Therefore, the source of absolutist government was really in human nature itself—a universal desire of every person to be in control and to dominate others. The solution for this human tendency to want all power was to separate and divide power constitutionally (such as between legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the state) and, in the words of James Madison, to "pit ambition against ambition," or counteract power with other power in society. This institutional solution to absolutism relies less on human virtue and more on formal rules and procedures to prevent concentration of absolutist political power.

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