Central powers both promote and fear intermediary associations for identical functions

Evidence

How much this is only an intensification of the general political questionability of special associations is clearly shown in a case like the following. The oldest German guilds offered their members effective legal protection, and thus replaced the protection of the state. For this reason, the Danish kings promoted them, since they saw in them a support of the public order. But, on the other hand, for the very same reason, the guilds also were considered to be competitors of the state: they were condemned in this capacity by the Prankish capitularies more particularly, because they were designated as conspiracies. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 9062

Categorization

• XREF: The guild case parallels Simmel’s triad logic elsewhere: any third party between individual and central power is simultaneously support and threat, recalling the tension between church associations and the sovereign in the reader’s triad framework.