Crisis techniques do not mean trying to prevent or delay a crisis in the societal system which, as Marxists understand it, is inevitable anyway. Rather we mean the differentiation in terms of time of the risks of power by including crises in a sort of power-planning. Emergency laws show a formalized pattern for this. This pattern can be reproduced in the political process with less difficulty and in a smaller format. Similarly, organizations are aware of 'management by exception'. This pattern can be extended into the political sphere in the sense of an exceptional activation of the political resources of power. In this type of anticipated and calculated crisis, the risk of greater power is paid for by certain restrictions in the decision-making process, by time pressure, by the short-term nature of desired effects and by dependence on drastic, widely politicized problems, thus with less ability in planning.

QUESTION: This describes crisis as a power-planning instrument rather than a force to be prevented — a provocative inversion worth exploring further in Luhmann's framework. XREF: Connects to modern 'management by exception' and emergency-powers literature, and to crisis-as-governance debates.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 762