Expanded state administration destabilizes cultural traditions and raises legitimation demands

Evidence

The structural dissimilarity between areas of administrative action and areas of cultural tradition constitutes, then, a systematic limit to attempts to compensate for legitimation deficits through conscious manipulation. Of course, a crisis argument can be constructed from this only in connection with the broader point that the expansion of state activity produces the side effect of a disproportionate increase in the need for legitimation. I consider a disproportionate increase probable, not only because the expansion of administratively processed matters makes necessary mass loyalty for new functions of state activity, but because the boundaries of the political system vis-à-vis the cultural system shift as a result of this expansion. In this situation, cultural affairs that were taken for granted, and that were previously boundary conditions for the political system, fall into the administrative planning area. Thus, traditions withheld from the public problematic, and all the more from practical discourses, are thematized. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2710

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘legitimation deficit’ from a full-blown crisis — only the disproportionate increase in legitimation needs, coupled with the structural limit on administrative compensation, warrants a crisis argument.
• XREF: Connects to Habermas’s public sphere theory and the structural distinction between system and lifeworld developed later in his work. — connects to: State administrative expansion itself triggers a legitimation crisis by politicizing taken-for-granted culture.; Modernization of traditional cultures always requires political coercion — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 743; Late-capitalist state intervention destroys traditions and cannot offset the loss indefinitely — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2713 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Late-capitalist state intervention destroys traditions and cannot offset the loss indefinitely #corroborates (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2713
• Administrative planning inadvertently politicizes private life and weakens tradition #corroborates (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2712
• Modernization of traditional cultures always requires political coercion #expands (0.82) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 743
• State expansion paradoxically reduces effective control and increases reliance on violence #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1726