How do we get politicians to carry out their promises of reducing the size of the state?

Bob's Head Revisited on Compromise Cameron:

I also liked what he said about small government. But many believers in small government have said this over the years - Reagan and Thatcher spring to mind. In both cases, the state grew much bigger under them. It’s an extremely hard thing to do. The more areas a government tries to change or improve the more they got involved. The pressure is on them to ‘do something’, and unfortunately they invariably do. And as they do, they feed the monster.

This is spot on, as far as I am concerned. The Moai and I have often mused on the fact that it is the general trend of governments once in power to bring further control towards themselves and therefore expand the reach of the state. Even if parties are elected on a platform of reducing the size of the state - and even if they start by doing precisely that - they reach a critical point in any administration and start going towards increased state control. And as soon as they do that, they can't stop.

Which does beg the question of exactly what can be done to stop this terrible trend. And to be honest with you, I am at a loss to provide any sort of a meaningful answer. It is part of the psychological make-up of those who seek power to want increase that power, that influence, that control when they win the right to govern. And the pressure, as BHR points out, is always on governments to "do something" - and doing something normally involves a new law or a new initiative - or anything that erodes the autonomy of individuals in this country.

The best I can come up with is to elect a party whose explicit manifesto is to reduce the scope of the state. We need a party who not only believes in small government, but who also explicitly wants to create a smaller state and who doesn't perceive change in society having to come from an increase in the size and/or the reach of the state. Regular readers will know which party I believe is most likely to be able to achieve this end. Yet I still don't know what can be done to stop a government from flexing its muscles and "problem solving" through intrusive legislation when the paedophile strikes, or the terrorist attacks, or when something terrible happens. At the end of the day trusting a politician to voluntarily cede their hard fought for power and limit their sphere of influence requires a massive leap of faith - a leap of faith that can't be justified by the behaviour of governments in the past.