The ‘nightwatchman’ expression for the liberal State was coined by Lassalle.

Evidence

It must be remembered that the expression “nightwatchman” for the liberal State comes from Lassalle, i.e. from a dogmatic and non-dialectical statalist (look closely at Lassalle’s doctrines on this point and on the State in general, in contrast with Marxism). … In the doctrine of the State as regulated society, one will have to pass from a phase in which “State” will be equal to “government”, and “State” will be identified with “civil society”, to a phase of the State as nightwatchman—i.e. of a coercive organisation which will safeguard the development of the continually proliferating elements of regulated society, and which will therefore progressively reduce its own authoritarian and forcible interventions. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 979

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s toolkit interest in how state coercion is theorized to diminish as hegemony expands.