Abstract

LAGOS FLORES, Roberto Rodrigo. The expanding State: A critical analysis of its pathologies, transformations, and challenges. e-Rev. Multidiscip. Saber [online]. 2025, vol.3, e-RMS02082025.  Epub Sep 23, 2025. ISSN 2960-2467.  https://doi.org/10.61286/e-rms.v3i.191.

The phenomenon of the expansion of the functions and scope of the State, whose growth overflows its original vocation as moderator and guarantor of political order, becoming a problem of a political nature that blurs the boundaries between the public and the private, distorts its moderating function and threatens individual freedoms. The methodology employed is a conceptual and documentary research, which combines the analysis of primary sources from the tradition of political philosophy with specialized secondary sources. Among the most significant results, it is identified that state expansion manifests itself in excessive bureaucracy, legislative hypertrophy, state-society fusion, intervention in non-political spheres, and a tendency to serve particular or ideological interests. The main conclusions of the study are that this “state overreach” is not only a quantitative growth, but a political problem that generates pathologies such as authoritarianism, loss of sovereignty and legitimacy crisis, aggravated in Latin American contexts, where the State deviates from its essential political functions of security and order, thus betraying its fundamental purpose.

Keywords : state expansion; political philosophy; bureaucracy; sovereignty; State.

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