Power can be increased only when its own overthrow is institutionalized

Evidence

With the positivity of law and the parallel development of the positivity of purposes, the decision-making organization of the state can be made, in a true sense, sovereign. The state’s powers too must then be organized in a reflexive way. Ways of overpowering power-holders and forms of legitimate change of power must be institutionalized. Only when the overpowering of power is assured can the potential of power be increased without hesitation. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 251

Categorization

• XREF: The counterintuitive claim that power’s growth depends on institutionalizing its own overthrow parallels how Stevens’s total devotion grows precisely because Lord Darlington’s institutional hierarchy is unaccountable. — connects to: Power grows as both the power-holder and the subjected gain freedom; Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy; In organizations power generates its own countervailing power. (+4 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘Power that cannot remove itself cannot grow’ — how elites from the ‘powerless’ sovereign state to corporate leadership misread reflexive constraint as weakness when it is actually the precondition of durable power.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 251

Broader Connections

• Restricting freedom provokes the rebellion it aims to prevent #complicates (0.55)
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #expands (0.50)
• In organizations power generates its own countervailing power. #complicates (0.50)
• Power grows as both the power-holder and the subjected gain freedom #complicates (0.45)