As the service state expands, it produces the very claims that destabilize its control.

Evidence

The importance of this consideration increases as the public service sector in the society grows. As people are thrown more and more into the public sector for relief or entitlements they will be more able to make claims based on the discrepancies between programs that would provide for them adequately and programs as they actually exist. Government becomes more vulnerable to challenge as it assumes more responsibilities. This is why the service state, increasingly penetrating aspects of private life; contains elements that contradict the control it presumably exerts. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1371

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that growth of control apparatus simultaneously generates its own legitimation crises is a structural claim worth sitting with — the state’s reach becomes its vulnerability.
• ADDENDUM: Could extend the sacrifice essay’s theme that systems of domination spawn their own destabilizing contradictions, though at a different scale.