Interdependence-based power parasitically undermines both politics and its own domain

Evidence

At best it remains politically parasitic in that it attempts to profit from a political system which is still functioning, yet in so doing undermines its ability to function. At the same time such power tends to undermine the functioning of its own immediate area of concern by imposing upon interactions which are taking place there a transcending position around questions of power, while always assuming that this ability to function will be maintained. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 770

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors Stevens’s situation in Ishiguro: his unexpressed, diffuse loyalist power (silently withholding cooperation/warmth) erodes both the institution and his own personal life while assuming the institution will keep functioning. — connects to: Policies can entrench themselves by weakening their own enemies’ political capacity — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 201