Political anxieties arise from the constellation in which people rule over others and employ instruments of power to do so. Political anxieties are to be understood as those anxieties that people experience because they live in a state that sets rules, punishes violations of these rules, imposes limits on actions, enforces penalties, and in this way can profoundly intervene in people’s lives. These are, first and foremost, anxieties about those who wield political power and thereby also possess means of coercion such as the military, police, and prisons. But there are also, conversely, the anxieties of those in power toward the people—anxieties of being assassinated, overthrown, or not re-elected. This chapter will address both: dictatorships and their deliberate instrumentalization of anxieties, as well as democratic welfare states.