State expansion creates a legitimation deficit it cannot administratively control

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. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 678

Categorization

• DEFINE: Legitimation deficit: the gap between the loyalty a state needs and the justification it can supply; a core term of Legitimation Crisis.
• CANDY: Punchy formulation for a Habermas-conversant audience: the state outruns its own justifications.