The old certainties – the belief in the capacity of human intelligence to develop a transcendental rationality, and the idea of infinite progress through this increased knowledge – seemed to work well for a time as a self-description of intellectual human endeavour. Where sociology was concerned, however, Luhmann saw this quest for truth and progress as an unfortunate starting point. It did not lead, as it was expected to do, to increased knowledge opening the way to a better world. Instead what has emerged is a multitude of coexisting theories and hypotheses which give the impression of employing reliable scientific methods, but which depend ultimately for their validity on the particular belief about human nature that the particular sociological observer subscribes to.

XREF: Echoes Kuhn's paradigm dependence and other postmodern critiques of scientific objectivity; connects to the sociology of knowledge tradition. QUESTION: Does Luhmann offer an alternative grounding for sociology if observer-dependent beliefs undercut validity?

If sociology is to achieve its potential as a science, what is needed, according to Luhmann, is a new kind of enlightenment – a sociological enlightenment – one that rejects the unsustainable beliefs of ‘old Europe’ by devising a totally new way of understanding what society consists of and how it could be studied. This is the Soziologische Aufklärung (sociological enlightenment). Moreover, for Luhmann, sociology is uniquely placed to enlighten society about itself. ‘Sociology is enlightenment’, he explained, ‘when it observes society in a manner different from the way society in its different milieux observes itself.’ This is also meant to enlighten sociology itself by establishing a theoretical vocabulary that is on the one hand much more capable of grasping the complexity, eventfulness and ambiguities of social life, but on the other hand much more rigorous and encompassing in its approach. This puts emphasis on probing and challenging established patterns of thinking by comparing and relating them to, and contrasting them with, one another. Society is not seen as a natural outcome of human action, but as an improbable result of contingent events. Luhmann is here particularly interested in how these improbabilities are transformed into systems of meaning-generating communications. These are the generalized media of communication, of which trust and power are but two examples. … The next stage, the embryos of which are visible in Trust and Power, but which is not fully developed until his later works on different social systems, is to observe how, within each system itself, the capacity evolves for constructing its own unique version of its environment, so that one is left with not just one overriding version of what society accepts as truth and reality, but with several versions, which coexist uneasily and which continually re-establish their own identity through developing new ways of accommodating the versions of reality produced by other systems. This, for Luhmann, is what both typifies modern society and makes classical, Enlightenment-based sociology so ill-equipped to capture the complexity of that society.

Luhmann further explains that if sociology wants to see itself as a ‘critical’ science it cannot simply interpret itself as an opposition science that takes sides in the dispute between progressive and conservative ideologies. This can only lead to a failure to reflect upon the unity of the difference. A ‘critical’ project would mean that sociology is in a position to distinguish and is able to reflect upon the use of its distinctions. … He identifies what he sees as ‘the disadvantages’ that can arise from importing into sociology ‘terms and concepts from daily usage concerning the traditional world of ethical ideas’. These disadvantages predominate where this ‘introduction of the moral into sociological concepts’ takes the form of a ‘critical demolition and surprising presentation of the familiar in unfamiliar ways or of unmasking ideological beliefs’. Clearly this is a mild but direct attack on members of the Frankfurt School who were indeed engaged in producing a version of sociology which involved investigations of what Luhmann regarded as moral issues and, in many instances, a commitment to one particular side in the moral debate. In the aftermath of the overthrow of National Socialism in the Second World War, this, for Luhmann, was indeed ‘an easy trick to perform’. Luhmann ends his Preface by telling his readers of a new kind of sociology, one that does not rely on moral implants but instead seeks ‘to establish its intellectual position in positive terms by formulating a theory of its own’.

XREF: Connects to systems theory reference to the 'unity of the difference' — evokes Luhmann's broader second-order observation framework.

Luhmann uses the term ‘systems’ in a very specific way – a fact that is very often missed by those who wish to classify him as a systems theorist in the traditional sense. Early anthropological and previous functionalist theories understood systems through the existence of networks of people and describe the ways that individuals or groups of individuals, who are seen as belonging to the same organization or institution, relate to one another. The identification of a system and its description rely for their validity on the assumption of naturalism in the social world. Social systems exist naturally in society just as physical systems exist in the natural world. This makes it possible for observers of social systems to capture reality through unproblematic descriptions of what they are and what they do. In a similar way, people can be seen as belonging to a system. Judges, therefore, are part of the legal system, for example, and psychiatrists part of the medical system. Yet these predominantly naturalistic principles fail to capture the idea of the system as developed by Luhmann. Within his theory, systems are not simply parts of the natural world or extensions of physical entities. They are not subject to laws and logic governing their operations, the discovery of which increases the possibilities for control and improvement.

DEFINE: Distinguishes Luhmann's technical sense of 'system' from the naturalistic, people-based meaning used by earlier functionalist and anthropological theories.

An observation can be defined as both a distinction and an indication: something is distinguished, as an object or a subject, from something else and, through this distinction, it is indicated. For instance, the government can be distinguished through observation from its opposition, what is lawful can be distinguished from what is unlawful only through observations, and these observations, once made, allow for subsequent operations to make distinctions based on the distinctions government/ opposition and lawful/unlawful. Observations, then, are not vehicles but the very operations that constitute a system.

DEFINE: Defines observation as the dual act of distinction and indication — not merely a perceptual vehicle but a system-constituting operation.

The intention of the Trust book was therefore to progress with his theoretical project, but with an applied and empirical direction in mind. The reader will notice that the book contains frequent references that point to further empirical research.

Luhmann's identification of trust in relation to complexity as being a social not just a psychological coping mechanism had an impact on several other influential sociologists in the Anglophone world.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's systems theory and sociological treatments of risk and trust similar to Giddens and Beck.

In the early writings, trust was strongly bound to the problem of reduction of complexity within an action-theoretical framework. These two elements (action and reduction of complexity) subsequently faded into the background or were displaced by later theoretical developments – as, for instance, in the transition to an emphasis on communication and observation – and the term trust was never fully reworked to reflect these later developments.

XREF: Connects to systems theory and Luhmann's later work on communication and observation, where trust's conceptual foundations were left behind.

Since the early 1960s, a number of studies in the wider field of systems theory that analysed the political system and related phenomena had been published. These publications had received considerable criticism, however, for their neglect of the role of power. It seemed that the control abilities associated with the term system would define power out of existence.

XREF: Connects to broader debates in mid-century political science where systems theory (e.g., Easton, Deutsch) was criticized for downplaying power relations.

Scientifically validated research methods operate, like all prescriptive modes of observation, as filters which make selective aspects of reality accessible. As a general rule, the more rigorous the methods the narrower the aspect of reality that becomes accessible to the observer.

XREF: Tension between scientific rigor and holistic understanding — connects to debates about reductionism versus systems thinking in research methodology.

His objective was not to produce an esoteric language shared only by social theorists, but to develop a language which was able to manage the new ideas created by the dynamism of his new enlightenment and its unique way of observing the world. The hope was that these terms, once created, would eventually provide a common vocabulary to enable communication to take place between different understandings of the social world.

XREF: Connects to the sociology of knowledge and how shared language creates common ground in emerging disciplines, echoing Kuhn's concept of paradigm formation.

Within the US and the UK the one unifying factor which allows those working from different presuppositions and within different fields of interest all to claim that what they are doing is ‘sociological’ has been that of empirical research methods. In addition to providing a common body of knowledge which unites all or almost all social scientists, sound methodology has been elevated to the status of a gold standard by which the validity of any piece of research should be measured. While the intention is clearly to align the social sciences with the natural sciences and avoid the kind of subjective, value-laden studies that have dogged sociology’s reputation in the past, some would argue that this preoccupation with methods has gone too far. Peter Berger, for example, labels it ‘methodological fetishism – the dominance of method over content’.

XREF: Relates to broader debates in social science methodology—parallels critiques of positivism and the replication crisis discourse across disciplines.

Luhmann’s general theory of society represents the road that sociology did not take back in the twentieth century. We would suggest that the road it did in fact take has not led to any fulfilment of its Enlightenmentinspired claims to ‘understand society’ and, through the generation of scientific knowledge, to make the world a better place. The vast majority of the predictions made through the acquisition of sociological knowledge have failed to materialize, and the social world in the year 2017 appears more unruly, out-of-control and precarious than has been the case for many generations.

XREF: Challenges the common assumption that sociology provides genuine predictive scientific knowledge of society.

Any translation always involves a balance between a literal rendition of the original and producing something which both reads well in the target language and at the same time conveys the ideas and intentions of the author. We took the early decision that our prime task was to publish a text that was readily understandable by English-speaking readers, even if that meant failing to give every German word its literal translation. Even so, these two books present as formidable a challenge to readers in English as they do in German, and there is nothing that translators can or should do to reduce that challenge by trying to simplify the text.

DEFINE: Clarifies translation as a trade-off between literal accuracy and natural readability, not a mechanical word-for-word process.

It is common to translate the German word 'Sinn' as meaning. However, the reader should be aware that the German word does not directly include the notion of meaning and signification. In this context, one could say that Sinn precedes meaning or that meaning results from Sinn. For Luhmann Sinn refers to the phenomenal conception of the horizon of possibilities.

DEFINE: Clarifies that Luhmann's Sinn is not equivalent to 'meaning' but refers to a phenomenal horizon of possible selections. QUESTION: Worth chasing how 'Sinn precedes meaning' operationalizes in Luhmann's systems theory — what does the horizon-of-possibilities framing do analytically?

The term 'ontification' is used by Husserl to describe the sense of being as temporally constituted. Luhmann seems to suggest in this context that trust as a virtue or moral standard can be gained or applied in social contexts that have an emphasis on temporal endurance and stability; for instance, the patron/client relationship in Ancient Rome was based on such a concept of trust – known as fiducia.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's systems theory and sociological work on trust, plus the historical Roman patron-client relationship.

Throughout the text Luhmann uses the word 'schenken' – to give something as a present. There is no direct equivalent in English to translate this. One can talk of 'gifting', as a verb, meaning 'to endow with gifts' or 'make a present of'. However, Luhmann's use of this word in this context is a deliberate attempt to convey the liberal dimension of giving trust, which cannot be demanded (just as one cannot really demand presents if they are to remain presents, one cannot demand trust without raising suspicions).

DEFINE: Clarifies Luhmann's deliberate use of 'schenken' to convey the voluntary, liberal dimension of trust.

Luhmann uses in his writings the two words 'Erfahrung' and 'Erleben', which both translate as 'experience' in English. There is a semantic overlap between the two German words, but 'Erleben' is closer to the English 'to experience something', or 'to go through some experience', while 'Erfahrung' is closer to the notion of experience in the sense of 'to be experienced in something', that is, to learn something or to obtain knowledge about something by having gone through the experience.

DEFINE: Distinguishes Erleben (going through an experience) from Erfahrung (accumulated knowledge from experience) — a useful conceptual distinction often lost in English translation.

The words 'conditional' or 'conditioning' have a different meaning in Luhmann's writings than in behavioural psychology. Conditioning refers for Luhmann to the selective temporal arrangement of relationships between elements. Systems are not simply relationships between elements, since these relationships have to be regulated, and this is where he uses the term conditioning.

DEFINE: Clarifies Luhmann's idiosyncratic use of 'conditioning' to distinguish it from behavioural psychology's meaning.

The German word 'Gewalt' has a broad meaning and can be translated as force or violence. In most cases, the word force seems the most suitable translation. However, depending on the context, we have also made use of the word violence.

If, on the other hand, sociology could go beyond this level and seek to establish its intellectual position in positive terms by formulating a theory of its own, and then enter a dialogue with the everyday understanding of the social world and its formation of this understanding through ethics, then the advantages of a certain common vocabulary might well outweigh its disadvantages. It is in this sense that the following reflections on the notion of trust are aimed at a contribution to sociological theory.

DEFINE: Defines the author's methodological stance: sociology should build its own positive theory and enter dialogue with everyday understanding, rather than merely distinguishing itself negatively.

Complexity, and the capacity for dealing with it, however, is not just the hidden motive, the unifying purpose behind the whole conceptual orientation of the functional method; it is at the same time the most fundamental substantive problem for functional research. It is only from the standpoint of its uttermost complexity that it is worthwhile attacking the problem of the world as a whole, the universal horizon of all human experience. Since it has no boundaries, the world is not a system. There being nothing external to it, it cannot be threatened. Even radical changes in its form of energy can be interpreted only as events within the world. The world poses a problem only in relation to the existence of true and consistent identities, due to its spatial and temporal complexity and due to its superabundance of realities and possibilities, which make it virtually impossible for stable expectations to emerge. This inhibits successful adaptation to the world by the individual. From its interior the world appears as unmanageable complexity, and this is the aspect of the problem that it presents for systems which seek to maintain themselves in the world.

The concept of complexity has therefore to be defined in very abstract terms. This can be done straightforwardly in terms of a distinction between system and environment and in terms of a system’s potential for actualization. The concept then signifies a number of possibilities which are opened up through system formation. It implies that the conditions (and hence boundaries) of possibility can be specified, that the world becomes constituted after this fashion and also that it contains more possibilities than can be realized, so that in this sense it has an 'open' structure. From one angle this relationship between world and system can be seen as a problem of overload and of a constantly threatened stability. This, in fact, is the approach of functionalist systems theory. From the opposite perspective, the same situation appears as a 'higher' order, constructed by reducing complexity through system building, which renders the problem one of selection. This latter approach is that of cybernetic systems theory.

DEFINE: Luhmann defines complexity abstractly as a surplus of possibilities over what a formed system can actualize, distinguishing overload-oriented functionalism from selection-oriented cybernetics.

Since other people have their own first-hand access to the world and can experience things differently, they may consequently be a source of profound insecurity for me. Over and above the plenitude of real objects of various kinds and the amplification of their variety in the course of time, the complexity of the world is further enhanced through the social dimension in which man appears not simply as another object but as an alter ego. This is why further increases in complexity call for new mechanisms for the reduction of complexity – above all, of course, for language and for reflexive self-consciousness which act as mechanisms of generalization and selectivity.

XREF: Connects to sociological theories of otherness and social complexity reduction (Luhmann, symbolic interactionism).

It would be wrong to regard this as the emergence of first one (increased complexity) and then the other (reduction of complexity) in some historical sense, as though one were a cause or energizer of the other. Causality is to be seen in both, in a mutual cause and effect relationship. The functional compartmentalization of this unity into a problem (increase of complexity) on the one hand, and a solution (reduction of complexity) on the other, serves simply as a means to compare different kinds of solutions. In the final analysis, the increase and reduction of complexity belong together as complementary aspects of the structure of human response to the world.

DEFINE: Clarifies that 'increase of complexity' and 'reduction of complexity' are not sequential stages but mutually linked, complementary aspects of the same phenomenon.

These two perspectives are mutually exclusive, since the identity principle, by which one is defined as constant, is precisely what has to be treated as varying in defining the other. They cannot therefore be employed simultaneously. But precisely because of this mutual exclusiveness, both forms of identification reinforce each other as complementary negatives. In other words, variation, as such, is inconceivable, if one cannot assume identities with respect to which something is changing.

Trust can only be secured and maintained in the present. Neither the uncertain future nor even the past can arouse trust, since what has been does not eliminate the possibility of the future discovery of another past. This present-relatedness and its implications for trust cannot be understood and elaborated if the present is conceived in terms of an event fixed to a point in time, as a moment, as the instant at which the event occurs. Rather, the basis of all trust is the present as an enduring continuum of changing events, as the totality of constancies where events can occur.

DEFINE: Reframes the present not as a point-in-time instant but as an enduring continuum of constancies where events occur — this reconception is what grounds trust.

The problem of trust therefore consists in the fact that the future contains far more possibilities than could ever be realized in the present and thus be transferred into the past. The uncertainty about what will happen is simply a consequence of the very elementary fact that not all futures can become the present and hence become the past. The future places an excessive burden on a person's ability to represent things to himself. People have to live in the present along with this everlastingly over-complex future. They must, therefore, prune the future so as to measure up with the present, that is, to reduce complexity.

XREF: Connects to systems theory (Luhmann) and general discussions of risk, uncertainty, and trust as a complexity-reduction mechanism in social systems. Builds on: "Complexity means possibilities exceeding what a system can realize."

Trust is one of the ways of bringing this about. The formation and consolidation of trust is therefore concerned with the future horizon of the actual present. It is an attempt to envisage the future but not to bring about future presents. Every kind of planning and advance calculation of future presents, all indirect, long-lasting and circuitously conceived orientations, remain problematical from the point of view of trust. They have to be referred back to the present, in which they have to be anchored. The growing complexity of such plans calls for satisfaction and decision-making to be increasingly deferred and thus cause their forward planning and fixed deadlines to lose their certainty. So with increased complexity there is a corresponding growth in the need for assurances about the present, for example, trust.

Builds on: "Trust rests only on the present as an enduring continuum."

Whereas instrumental orientations have reference to goals, to effects anticipated for the future, the expressive content of experiences serves to stabilize the present in the security of its constancies rather than as a flickering presence of momentary events, but a present that constitutes itself – through its own particular horizon of the future and the past – as the enduring basis of changing events.

DEFINE: Distinguishes instrumental (goals/effects) from expressive orientations in terms of how each relates to time — instrumental points forward, expressive stabilizes the present.

This effect is not to be confused with instrumental mastery over events. Where such mastery can be assured (i.e. 'actualized'), trust is not necessary. But trust is required for the reduction of a future characterized by more or less indeterminate complexity.

The indeterminate complexity of possible events is, in other words, not simply a consequence of deficient forward planning, but is in other senses a consequence of the extent of instrumental planning. Future possibilities in fact do not contract but rather expand with planning projections, which incorporate long and complicated chains of cause and effect involving many parameters and the many actions by different people. Moreover, as far as the individual is concerned, it is precisely this planned complexity which gives rise to a new form of insecurity. Furthermore, such planning contains a high proportion of technically significant indeterminacy. It makes sense to postpone decisions until more events have occurred in the course of time and there has been further reduction of complexity. Money, power and truth (to which we shall be returning in detail) are social mechanisms which permit decisions to be postponed and yet guarantee assurance in the face of a future of greater uncertainty and complexity of events. The stabilization of these and other mechanisms in the present presupposes trust.

DEFINE: Introduces the notion that future possibilities expand, not contract, with planning—a counterintuitive reframing of planning's relationship to uncertainty.

Talcott Parsons was right in regarding the expressive solidarity of the small group as the basis of political trust precisely in relation to the unavoidable indeterminacy of complex political processes. The same circumstance points to the fact that subsystems of society such as the political, and perhaps the economic system, which are not adequate for present-day requirements, remain dependent on other fields of action where the orientation to the present, required for the formation of trust, has been preserved.

DEFINE: Clarifies how expressive solidarity in small groups functions as the foundation of political trust.

So it is not to be expected that scientific and technological development of civilization will bring events under control, substituting mastery over things for trust as a social mechanism and thus making it unnecessary. Instead, one should expect trust to be increasingly in demand as a means of enduring the complexity of the future which technology will generate.

QUESTION: How does rising social complexity from technology paradoxically demand more interpersonal trust? Worth tracing the mechanism behind this counterintuitive claim.

As soon as another person figures in consciousness, not simply as an object in the world but as alter ego, as freedom to see things differently and to behave differently, the traditional taken-for-granted character of the world is upset and its complexity manifest in a quite new dimension, for which there are no appropriate ways for the time being by which it can be grasped or absorbed.

XREF: Connects to phenomenological philosophy — Berger and Luckmann's social construction of reality, and Levinas's ethics of the Other.

In familiar worlds, the past prevails over the present and the future. The past does not contain any 'other possibilities'; complexity is reduced at the outset. Thus an orientation to things past can simplify the world and render it less harmful. One can assume that the familiar will remain, that the established will be repeated and that the familiar world will continue into the future.

Trust is only possible in a familiar world; it needs history as a reliable background. One cannot confer trust without this essential basis and without all previous experiences. But rather than being just an inference from the past, trust goes beyond the information it derives from the past and takes the risk of defining the future. The complexity of the future world is reduced by the act of trust. In trusting, one engages in action as though there were only certain possibilities in the future. One fixes one's present future to a future present. In this way one offers other people a determinate future, a common future, which is not readily apparent from the past.

As a social order becomes more complex and variable, it tends on the whole to lose its matter-of-fact character, its taken-for-granted familiarity, because daily experience can envisage or recall it only in a fragmentary way. Yet the very complexity of the social order creates a greater need for co-ordination and hence a need to determine the future – i.e. a need for trust, a need which is now decreasingly supported by familiarity.

XREF: Connects to sociological theories of disembedding, such as Giddens on trust and expert systems in modern institutions. Also resonates with the paradox that modern societies demand more trust of strangers than traditional ones did. Builds on: "Familiarity with past patterns reduces perceived world complexity and harm."

The positive sciences reduce truth-enabling knowledge to the function of ordering the relationship between perception and concept, on the assumption that perception, as well as concepts (particularly if they are congruent), can be brought to unequivocal intersubjective certainty and secured against the arbitrariness of the alter ego. So it is that the vast, booming enterprise of science is increasingly content to justify its methods by their success without admitting any question of what happens in those areas of knowledge in which intersubjective certainty cannot be attained and without questioning the overall significance of setting up this kind of intersubjective certainty in place of the old and familiar evidence by which truth used to be measured.

People live from day to day in this intermediate zone without specific problems of trust or distrust. Intersubjective constitution is the prerequisite for trust and distrust, but people do not see them as having this basis, nor do they perceive it as a problem unless they are in the position of having to turn this familiarity with the objective world into trust in the process of its intersubjective constitution. They dwell in the cave of shadows described by Plato and have to be content with forms already reduced for them, unless they put themselves into a position in which the full complexity of the world can be encountered with more effective ways of reducing it. It is not a question, therefore, of their withstanding the evidence of ideas which are more illuminating than the power of their vision, but more a question of creating stable systems out of processes of intersubjective communication – systems which better encompass and reduce the complexity of the world – and of putting their trust in the functioning of these systems.

XREF: Parallels Luhmann's systems theory and Plato's cave allegory, both invoked in the passage.

On the basis of familiarity with the everyday world, trust is principally interpersonal trust (and is therefore limited). It serves to overcome an element of uncertainty in the behaviour of other people which is experienced as the unpredictability of change in an object. In so far as the need for complexity grows, and in so far as the other person enters the picture both as alter ego and as fellow-author of this complexity and of its reduction, trust has to be extended, and the original unquestionable familiarity of the world pushed back, although it cannot be eliminated completely. It becomes as a result a new form of system trust, which implies renouncing as a conscious risk some possible further information and implies as well a wary indifference to and a continuous control of results. System trust is not only applicable to social systems but also to other people as personal systems. This change, if one looks closely at the assumptions which lie within the mode of trusting, corresponds to a change from bases of trust which are defined in primarily emotional terms, to those which are primarily performance based.

DEFINE: Distinguishes interpersonal trust (emotional, limited) from system trust (performance-based, extended with conscious risk and wary control). XREF: Connects to Luhmann's sociology of trust and complexity, and to discussions of trust in institutions versus personal relationships.

Trust is only involved when the trusting expectation makes a difference to a decision; otherwise what we have is a simple hope. If a mother leaves a child in the care of a babysitter, a number of hopes are associated with this. These are, that nothing untoward will happen, that the girl will be kind to the baby, will not disturb its sleep by turning up the radio, and so on. Her trust only extends to eventualities which, if they occur, would cause her to regret her decision to go out at all and to leave her child in the care of anybody. Trust therefore always bears upon a critical alternative, in which the harm resulting from a breach of trust may be greater than the benefit to be gained from the trust proving warranted. Hence one who trusts takes cognizance of the possibility of excessive harm arising from the selectivity of others' actions and adopts a position towards that possibility. One who simply hopes has confidence despite uncertainty. Trust reflects contingency. Hope ignores contingency.

DEFINE: Distinguishes trust (risk-bearing, decision-relevant, contingent) from hope (confidence despite uncertainty), centered on the 'critical alternative' where breach harm exceeds trust benefit.

This is not to assume, on the other hand, that risk and the grounds for trust will be weighed up rationally before doing anything. Trust can also be shown to be thoughtless, careless and routinized, and thus to require no unnecessary expenditure of consciousness especially if expectation approaches certainty. One who goes unarmed among his fellow human beings puts trust in them, and does not nowadays seriously weigh up the alternative of carrying a sword or pistol. Trust merges gradually into expectations of continuity, which are formed like firm guidelines by which to conduct our everyday lives. But not all expectations of this nature involve trust; only those concerning conduct do so, and among the latter only those in the light of which one commits one's own actions and which if unrealized will lead one to regret one's behaviour.

XREF: Connects to sociological work on tacit knowledge and habitus — Giddens' structuration theory and Bourdieu's practical sense address similar unexamined expectations.

Despite every effort of organization and rational planning, it is impossible for all actions to be guided by means of reliable forecasts of their consequences. There remain uncertainties to be accommodated and there must exist roles whose special task this is. Roles such as the politician's or the managing director's, for example, are typically monitored in terms of successful outcomes rather than of measurable standards, precisely because the correct action cannot be identified in sufficient detail in advance. But success – if it appears at all – does not appear till after the action, while there must be commitment beforehand. This problem of time is bridged through the trust that is granted as an advance on success and on cancellation, for example, through the appointment of people to public office, through loans of capital, and such like.

Reduction in this sense is not deduction. Rather, it resembles induction. In the last resort, no decisive grounds can be offered for trusting; trust results from exceeding existing information. It is, as Simmel pointed out, a blending of knowledge and ignorance. Although the one who trusts is never at a loss for reasons and is quite capable of giving an account of why he shows trust in this or that case, the point of such reasons is really to uphold his self-respect and justify him socially. They prevent him from appearing to himself and others as a fool, as an inexperienced person illadapted to life, in the event of his trust being abused. At most, they are brought into account for the placing of trust, but not for trust itself. Trust remains a risk.

XREF: Connects to Simmel's concept of trust as a blend of knowledge and ignorance — echoes themes about the limits of rational justification.

The system substitutes inner certainty for external certainty9 and in so doing raises its tolerance of uncertainty in external relationships. The problem of the complexity gap thereby shifts to some extent into the secondary problem of inner certainty. Inner certainty can come about in two different, indeed opposite, ways – and it is largely because of this that the development of trust can be pretty reliably anticipated time and again, despite very diverse system conditions. It may be based on the fact that the object of trust fulfils an indispensable function for the internal structure – the processing of experience. A weakening of trust, accordingly, would have very far-reaching consequences for self-assurance, and will not be countenanced as a possibility because it would lead to extensive changes in internal dispositions for which the system lacks time, energy or endorsement by the environment. In quite the reverse way, the certainty of trust may depend on a more strongly differentiated internal system, with the consequence that the failure of the object of trust can inflict only partial and isolated damage and the object of trust can be replaced by functional equivalents. In both cases the primary support of trust comes from the functions it plays in the ordering of information-processing internal to the system, rather than directly from guarantees originating in the environment.

DEFINE: Clarifies a systems-theoretic conception: trust operates as an internal information-processing mechanism that manages the complexity gap by substituting internal for external certainty.

Trust is therefore an attitude which is neither objective nor subjective; nor can it be transferred to other objects or to other trusting people.

Instead, one has to proceed from the starting point that the learning process is mediated by the experiences of the learner with himself and is steered by the self-developing (also learned) identity of the learner.

The reality of public administration is far too complex for Congressmen to be able to comprehend it fully and evaluate it. They cannot act without trusting in the personal integrity of the members of the administration. Hence representatives do not in practice exercise control over the factual circumstances but rather over the extent to which they are prepared to trust, and only through this are they able to exercise indirect control over the factual situation. Under these rather constrained circumstances, they react with great emotional intensity to the slightest sign of dishonesty through withdrawing trust, and through other sanctions.

XREF: Connects to principal-agent theory and the limits of legislative oversight; also echoes trust-based theories of governance.

Whoever trusts has to keep control over his own preparedness to accept the risks involved. He must make it clear to himself, if only to reassure himself, that he is not trusting unconditionally but rather within limits and in proportion to specific, rational expectations. It is himself he must curb and control when he puts his trust in someone or something. This is an intrinsic part of the structure of motives which trust makes possible, and comes about by making the object of trust more attainable with the help of symbols of trustworthiness.

Because reality is too complex for actual control, trust is kept under control with the aid of the implications provided by symbols. This is supported by a crudely simplified framework of indices as a form of feedback loop carrying messages about whether or not the continuance of trust is justified.

Nevertheless, not every message threatens or disrupts trust. The trusted person enjoys a certain credit which allows even unfavourable experiences to be effectively reinterpreted or absorbed. As we shall argue, particularly in differentiating between trust and distrust (Chapter 10), control is exercised by means of thresholds which may not be crossed without the withdrawal of trust.

DEFINE: Describes the mechanism by which trust acts as a resource allowing negative experiences to be absorbed or re-framed rather than immediately destroying the relationship.

The way in which symbolic controls operate, moreover, tends characteristically to be unquestioned and indeterminate. It proceeds for the most part by inferences which remain uncommunicated and which therefore do not even need to be defined or properly justified. This is why a very precise articulation of reasons and views is not in keeping with either the demonstration of trust or the withdrawal of trust. Even for those who seek trust, it is not required; it can quite easily even become a disrupting factor or, even more, may arouse distrust. It would contradict the function and style of trust to request and offer detailed factual information and specialized arguments, although the possibility of such an explanation ought to be hinted at.

Trust rests on illusion. In actuality, there is less information available than would be required to give assurance of success. The actor willingly surmounts this deficit of information.

XREF: Connects to game theory and signalling theory discussions about information asymmetry and how actors proceed without full knowledge.

Such an operation can – in extreme but imaginable situations – result from purely internal conditions, and lead to a form of pathological trust regardless of partners, situations and circumstances. Generally speaking, however, the truster seeks in his subjective image of the world some objective clues about whether or not trust is justified. Without any previous information trust would be nearly impossible. Trust exceeds on information; it rests on the truster being already au fait with certain general features, being already informed, even if incompletely and unreliably.

The clues employed to form trust do not eliminate the risk; they simply make it less risky. They do not supply complete information about the expected behaviour of the person to be trusted. They simply serve as a springboard for the leap into a bounded and structured uncertainty. It should not be assumed, therefore, that empirical research will yield strong law-like relationships between bases for trust, treated as causes, and demonstrations of trust, treated as effects, but one may expect there to be statistical correlations

XREF: Connects to game theory and behavioral economics work on trust under uncertainty. Builds on: "Trust requires prior information, even if incomplete or unreliable."

For the most part, closer familiarity keeps the problem of trust from even becoming a matter for reflection. And when reflection does occur in such circumstances, the taken-for-granted nature of familiarity will be lifted. A gulf of obscurity opens up even with respect to things and people nearest to one, which doubt removes into a surprising impression of foreignness.

On the other hand, significance attaches to the possibility he (i.e. the potential truster) possesses of exercising influence (at a cost to be taken into account) upon the fate of his partner. In fact, such potential influence may be taken into account in the partner’s calculation of his gains and losses, and to this extent this set of considerations carries most weight. Through his future influence the truster can sanction a breach of trust; he can also, when such a possibility is to be envisaged, reckon on his partner also reckoning with it, while he ponders a breach of trust, and thereby being restrained. Legal arrangements which lend special assurance to particular expectations, and make them sanctionable, are an indispensable basis for any long-term considerations of this nature; thus, they lessen the risk of conferring trust.

However, trust and law can remain closely congruent with one another only in very simple social systems, those which have barely any structural problems, and are small enough for all members to be familiar with one another. In such systems trust is expected and distrust becomes an affront, an offence against the rules of collective life and thus against the laws of the system, and vice versa, any breach of trust claimed and proven is sanctioned as wrongdoing. Under such circumstances anyone who distrusts cannot give expression to his feelings and fears without becoming a social isolate. As a consequence, the basic laws of the system steer him in the direction of a socially typified trust.

Hence the legal system must place restrictions upon itself in its application of the principle of trust, lest it make legal constructions by more appropriate paths untenable. Otherwise there would be a disorderly, undisciplined development of concepts involving superfluous parallel constructs, undifferentiated grounds of argument, and above all, erosion of the division of powers by the judiciary through the protection offered by trust in situations which have come about through violation of the law. … Ultimately, the notion of trust, as total reliance upon other people, lies at the foundation of law, in the same way that, conversely, the modalities of trust can only come about thanks to the risk-mitigation afforded by the law.

DEFINE: Clarifies the reciprocal relationship proposed between legal structures and interpersonal trust as mutually constitutive.

It is not decisive, in this regard, whether or not the partner will in the end actually make a complete calculation with reference to law and sanctions to suit himself. The argument does not directly rest upon this calculation, but upon the truster's ability to anticipate it. In this context it operates tacitly, without poisoning the relationship with the threat of sanctions and thus putting paid to emergent trust. … The structure of the trust relationship requires that such calculation should remain latent, evolving in its generalizing fashion covertly, purely as a reassuring consideration. In his overt behaviour the truster must show himself 'utterly trustworthy', lest he himself sow the seed from which later reciprocal distrust may grow, thereby producing exactly the result which he is trying to avoid.

Because contrived interdependencies of this nature are not expected, to bring them about requires open communication about them between the people concerned, and this, as we have suggested, may introduce a climate unfavourable to trust into the relationship. … The situation is different when such interdependencies already exist and can be presumed to be known, when the participants are living in a system which is familiar to both of them, so no further information about it is required, since it tacitly provides an everyday basis for mutual understanding.

Trust relationships find a favourable soil in social contexts with the same kind of structure, i.e. characterized by the relative persistence of the relationship, by reciprocal dependencies, and a certain quality of the unforeseen. The overriding consideration is the law of meeting again. The participants will have to go on seeing each other. This makes it more difficult for trust to be breached, at any rate when any breach could not be hidden from the partner or acceptable excuses offered.

How socially approved possibilities of sanction are distributed has a bearing also on the side third parties would take if a breach of trust should occur, or whether – and to what extent – they would hold whoever commits a breach of trust responsible, or whether they would charge the truster with naivety or foolishness. If the truster unthinkingly waives his right to apply sanctions, he may lose thereby the possibility of slanting the attribution of guilt in his own favour, and find himself the object of reproach. If I ask a stranger to bring my gold watch to a watchmaker who is to repair it, and he violates my trust, I lose thereby not just my watch, but my social standing. … In general, it is possible to see in operation in the attribution of guilt a morality which goes well beyond official law, has a considerable capacity for fine discriminations, is at the same time predictable, and whose verdict primarily depends on whether control over the situation has been renounced out of necessity or by carelessness. The fact that such attributions of guilt are typified and predictable assists the formation of trust, allowing the truster to foresee whether he is risking damage only or derision as well.

If we reconsider these hypotheses in the light of the information problem raised at the beginning of this chapter, it appears further that a problem of this kind, on which the need for trust is grounded, cannot be solved by tackling it directly. It is not possible to acquire information on the future behaviour of others except in an incomplete and unreliable fashion. But one can shift this problem into a realm where it can be mastered more effectively. One can inform oneself instead about certain structural properties of the system which one shares with others, acquire thereby the supports necessary for building trust, and so overcome the need for information which is lacking. As in many other functional contexts, structure reduces the need for information.

XREF: Echoes Niklas Luhmann's systems thinking on trust and the notion that institutions reduce cognitive load — parallels to bounded rationality in economics.

One cannot trust chaos. If nothing connects with anything else or everything with everything else, it becomes impossible to build generalizations. In other words, a single system cannot, by itself, generate higher generalization or trust. Their accomplishment presupposes an environment which already possesses structure, though not the same degree of order, and the same limitations on what is possible, as the system itself. But what structures the environment is none other than the existence of other systems in the environment.

XREF: Connects to the author's broader argument about meaning and mind emerging through relationships between systems, not within isolated ones. Builds on: "Social structure substitutes for incomplete information about others"

Since all communication, indeed every perceivable form of behaviour, says something about the person who is behaving, communication – even merely being seen by others – is a risky undertaking which requires some kind of safeguard. An individual's behaviour always gives away more information about himself than he can reconcile with his ideal self and more than he consciously wants to communicate. Thus, his mere appearance presumes some minimum trust, trust that he will not be misinterpreted, but that he will be accepted by and large in the guise he wishes to appear. There are people who experience this prerequisite site of trust to such an extreme degree that they have difficulty merely being – let along doing anything – in the presence of other people. Their sphere of action is limited in proportion to their lack of trust and, furthermore, inability to show trust limits their chances of winning trust. The possibilities for action increase proportionately to the increase in trust – trust in one's own self-presentation and in other people's interpretation of it. When such trust has been established, new ways of behaving become possible – jokes, unconventional initiatives, bluntness, verbal short cuts, welltimed silences, the choice of delicate subjects etc. When trust is tested and proven in this way, it can be accumulated by way of capital.

So far as personal trust is concerned, therefore, the foundations of trust in a society are adjusted according to the prospects and conditions for self-presentation and the tactical problems and dangers involved in it. This mechanism transforms societal-structured conditions into sources of trust, which means that it is not to be viewed and understood merely in terms of personal strategies, as it is by Goffman. The individual personality's system of reference is only one possible area of interest for functional analysis. On the other hand, strategic consistency is one indispensable element in the total context and the extent of the functionalization of self-presentation, the extent of psychological sensitivity, and the extent to which people are prepared to cooperate tactfully in delicate areas of self-presentation. These aspects are important variables regarding the conditions of trust in society.

XREF: Contrasts Goffman's personal-strategy view of self-presentation with Luhmann's structural-functional analysis of trust.

The question of the formation and consolidation of personal trust enables us to transfer our abstractly formulated problem of the reduction of complexity to the dimension of time, and to show that the problem of forming trust relationships must be solved gradually, step by step. The 'principle of small steps' replaces simpler forms of adaptation to the environment when the environment also operates in a contingent fashion or is too complex for adaptation at one stroke. For these, systems need time.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's broader systems theory and the concept of complexity reduction, likely familiar from social theory studies.

It is a necessary precondition that the situation permits selective steps, meaning behavioural choices, and that behaviour is not already determined either institutionally or historically. Thus the first basic prerequisite for building up personal trust is that human actions are perceived in general as personally determined. Trust is founded on the motivation attributed to behaviours. Conduct on the experience of which trust depends must appear as an expression and reaffirmation of personality. However, only such actions as are treated institutionally as 'free' are imputed to personality. Firstly, there is freedom, in the, as it were, presocial sense of other people's uncontrollable potency to act – the source of the need for trust. Secondly, there is institutionalized freedom, namely freedom bound up with and moderated through the social order, freedom as a complex of actions or aspects of actions for which one is personally responsible, which is the source of the ability to learn trust. In order for trust to emerge and fulfil its function, freedom must be transferred from one form into the other.

DEFINE: Distinguishes 'presocial freedom' (uncontrollable potency, source of trust-need) from 'institutionalized freedom' (personally responsible actions, source of ability to learn trust).

What proof of being deserving of trust can anyone give by saying that he has never been in prison? Against this, deviant behaviour, initiative or criticism are attributed personally. They can only occur if the social order can at the same time offer security, for such behaviour assumes the existence of relationships of trust and strengthens them by utilizing them.

Who was responsible for Hiroshima? Appraising the behaviour of motorists clearly reveals a combination of complex mediate effects, the visible demands of circumstances, and personally attributable behaviour. A mechanically generated high speed, although responsible for everything, is not a matter of personal choice but 'normal' practice. On the other hand, unexpected reactions are attributed to the person because of the considerable demands made on concentration and skill. Acting according to the norm is usually inconspicuous and weak in expression, and therefore is not a suitable base from which love and trust can be generated.

XREF: Connects to the sociology of norms, moral attribution, and how responsibility is assigned — echoes the fundamental attribution error in social psychology.

In a situation which is relatively open-ended, double contingent, and where both parties can operate selective choices which influence one another, it is possible to set in motion a process which forms trust by tackling the problem of the reduction of complexity over several discrete steps, i.e. sequentially.

XREF: This connects to game theory (iterated prisoner's dilemma) and gradual trust-building in negotiation contexts. SEED: Could angle an essay on why trust in institutions/relationships can't be instantaneous but must be built through staged commitments. Builds on: "Trust develops incrementally because complex environments demand gradual adaptation"

First of all there has to be some cause for displaying trust. Some situation has to be defined in which the person trusting is dependent on his partner, otherwise the problem does not arise. His behaviour must then commit him to this situation and make him run the risk of his trust being betrayed. In other words he must invest in what we called earlier a 'risky advance'. One fundamental condition is that it must be possible for the partner to abuse the trust; indeed, it must not merely be possible for him to do so but he must also have a considerable interest in doing so.

DEFINE: Clarifies the structural preconditions for genuine trust: dependence, a risky commitment, and a betrayal incentive for the partner.

In some cases a post hoc inference will suffice; it might even be that ignorance of particular aspects does no harm, i.e. does not obstruct progress towards trust, but this can hardly be decided without empirical research. However, the process may become more liable to break down where relevant circumstances are not known, even if the requisite behaviour has been followed in the initial phases. It can also become more liable to break down through an excess of knowledge, such as when the participants mutually infer that the process is being employed in order to build up trust. For in such instances, motives are unavoidably put in question, and such questioning can easily turn into distrust.

XREF: Echoes the paradox where explicit attempts to build trust undermine it — similar to how self-conscious trust or commercializing intimacy generates suspicion.

It is not possible to demand the trust of others; trust can only be offered and accepted. It is for this reason that demands to trust cannot start trust relationships off. This can only be done by what we have called an advance. The initiator may confer trust, or perhaps utilize an opportunity arisen by chance, to show himself trustworthy (for instance by returning a lost object which he has found). The truster sees in his own vulnerability the instrument whereby a trust relationship may be created.

Thus, the function of this supererogative can be seen in the fact that it transforms conditions for emergence into conditions for maintenance. And this is exactly what is required if trust is to emerge.

DEFINE: Clarifies the role of 'supererogative' acts (beyond-duty actions) in the trust-building mechanism.

We can use an old concept and qualify this peculiar advance with normative consequences we have been talking about as a supererogatory performance. One may call supererogatory a performance which does not flow from some previously assumed duty but manifests itself as meritorious, and attracts respect. In spite of recent attempts, the relationship between such a performance and duty remains logically and analytically obscure. However, what is of interest to us here is purely its function in the genesis of trust. It entails somehow an excess on the normative which has some parallels with the excess on the information discussed previously; it constitutes a surplus performance, which nobody can require, but which (for the self-same reason) engenders claims – as benefactions for instance engender a claim to gratitude.

A personal relationship on the basis of mutual favours usually opens with small-scale activities. Kindnesses, offers of help, and small gifts which cost nothing are proffered in a form which leaves room for tactful rejection. The relationship can only be deepened when acts of friendship have been reciprocated, when there is a spark of grateful recognition, and when the relationship has stood the test of everyday coming and going. It can then involve larger gifts, and, because each person trusts the other, can sustain a long, drawn-out imbalance. At this stage of development, immediate and exactly gauged reciprocation becomes a sign of distrust, because the person acting in this way presents himself as someone wanting to extricate himself as soon as possible from the bonds of gratitude.

XREF: Connects to Marcel Mauss's gift exchange theory and the concept of reciprocal altruism in evolutionary biology.

But there are two qualifications to be added to this rule. One must not infer that during the learning process trust can grow steadily and expand uninterruptedly into more important and consequential matters. To that extent experimental research in social psychology, which is concerned solely with minimal and trifling risks, affords a misleading basis for generalization. Changes in what is at stake and shifts in the balance between anticipated advantage and possible loss build into the learning process thresholds which make for qualitative differences – for instance, when the person who trusts is risking not only himself but also others, his family, his work, or his country.

XREF: Connects to research on risky decision-making and prospect theory (Kahneman/Tversky), where stake shifts alter risk evaluation. Also relevant to social trust literature at scale. QUESTION: What quantitative threshold marks the shift from minimally risky to consequential trust, and is it measurable or wholly contextual?

If we may now generalize, it is clear that such learning processes are only complete when the person to be trusted has had opportunities to betray that trust and has not used them. It is impossible to eliminate this risk during the process of learning. It can, however, be divided up into small stages and thereby minimized.

DEFINE: Offers a precise condition for when trust-learning is complete: the trusted party must have had and declined an opportunity to betray.

It seems that personal trust is only formed where it is needed. This is the case – even today – if the individual personality takes on a social-structural relevance, if the configuration of interaction relationships is arranged in the social system in such a way that it can only be arranged thus and now has to be restructured after that individual ceases to be involved.

DEFINE: Clarifies the specific social-structural conditions under which personal trust forms — it is not spontaneous but tied to the irreplaceable role an individual plays in a configuration of interactions.

Questions of how far personal trust is still needed today, in which social systems, and in which functions, would make a subject for extensive empirical research. Such research would, I suppose, indicate very quickly that the need to orientate oneself to other people's individual characteristics is as strong now as ever it was in all areas of social life where repeated contact takes place, and that the myth of mass society has its origins in some kind of optical illusion. On the other hand there is no doubt that modern differentiated social orders are much too complex for the social trust essential to ordinary living to be created solely by this type of orientation towards persons. It is all too obvious that the social order does not stand and fall by the few people one knows and trusts. There must be other ways of building up trust which do not depend on the personal element. But what are they?

QUESTION: Giddens poses an open question about what non-personal mechanisms build trust in complex societies — worth pursuing as a research thread.

We employ the concept of generalized media of communication in order to tackle this problem, and to designate devices additional to everyday language, devices which are symbolically generalized codes of selection, the function of which is to provide the capacity for intersubjective transmission of acts of selection over shorter or longer chains. Truth, love, power, money2 are outstanding examples of this kind of device which have evolved successfully. Through the generalizing capacity of such media, structures of expectation and patterns of motivation are formed which make it possible for selections made by one individual to be relevant to another, in the sense that he is aware of them and also does not treat them as an open question but performs his own selections as consequences of them.

DEFINE: Defines the concept of generalized media of communication in systems theory terms. XREF: Plausibly connects to Parsons' and Luhmann's sociological systems theory regarding symbolically generalized media.

In so far as the world becomes more complex and, at the same time, more capable of being determined by contingent processes, so that conscious acceptance of this change increases its effectiveness, the old unity of nature as a source of norms disintegrates, or is forced back to extremely formal decision-making premises. The jump from general and common assumptions of belief to personal trust can no longer bridge the ever-growing gap and the increasing length of the chains of selective processes. Trusting other people no longer readily includes accepting their view of the world as authoritative. One has to learn to put up with different interpretations of the world, linking one's own behaviour nevertheless to the selections of others. Trust then becomes, so to say, privatized, psychologized and thereby individual-tolerant; or else its function is narrowed down to certain types of communication in which the other person is demonstrably competent.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's systems theory and sociological accounts of modernity's shift from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, plus Giddens' work on disembedding and expert systems.

It has now become apparent that communication is made by people and affects people, but it no longer rests on an unchanging view of what is right or on close personal acquaintance. How is it that, in spite of this, such communications are reliable, and their reduction of complexity can be trusted? How is the intersubjective transfer of selection processes, already accomplished, made possible? We hope to clarify these questions by using the examples of money, truth and legitimate political power.

QUESTION: This frames the central puzzle: how do money, truth, and power make communication trustworthy absent personal acquaintance and shared values? Worth chasing the mechanism Luhmann proposes.

To summarize the known facts briefly, money is transferable freedom against a limited choice of goods. It guarantees this freedom abstractly, by means of an opportunity for exchange, on a quantitatively limited basis, leaving open questions of when, with whom, for which object and under what conditions the person possessing the money will carry out the exchange.

DEFINE: Defines money not as a physical object but as abstract, transferable freedom constrained to a limited range of goods, with exchange opportunities deferred rather than realized.

Whenever such trust in money is institutionalized, and, generally speaking, sustained, a sort of equivalent-certainty is created. Anyone who has money has at his disposal a generalized means of solving problems and within that context is able to do without anticipating specific problem situations. Liquidity reduces the need for information.

XREF: Connects to ideas about trust and institutionalized social coordination, possibly echoing work by Luhmann or economic sociologists on money as a generalized medium.

By converting personal trust into system trust, the process of learning is rendered easier, but control is made more difficult. Thus, typically, trust in money arises in, as it were, an automatically learned fashion, whereby the person trusting realizes his dependence on the functioning of a highly complex system which he cannot see through, although in principle it can be seen through. The person trusting knows he is unable to make corrections; he thus feels himself exposed to unforeseeable circumstances, but nevertheless has to continue trusting as though under compulsion to do so.

Anyone who trusts in the stability of the value of money, and the continuity of a multiplicity of opportunities for spending it, basically assumes that a system is functioning and places his trust in that function and not in known people. Such system trust is virtually automatically built up through continual affirmative experience in utilizing money. It needs constant ‘feedback’ but does not require specific built-in guarantees and is therefore incomparably easier to acquire than personal trust in new and different people all the time. On the other hand, it is incomparably more difficult to control.

XREF: Connects to sociological concepts of institutional vs. interpersonal trust, and to Niklas Luhmann's work on system trust.

Anyone who has money has no need, in that respect, to trust others. Generalized trust in the institution of money, then, replaces, through one all-inclusive act, the countless individual, difficult demonstrations of trust which would be necessary to provide a sure foundation for life in a co-operative society.

DEFINE: This passage defines 'generalized trust' in institutions as a functional replacement for the many individual demonstrations of trust that a cooperative society would otherwise require.

In a highly complex environment this type of trust can no longer take the form of personal trust, although this form does still exist, for example when one's doctor is also a family friend. Its typical form is trust in specialized and demonstrable abilities to process information, in functional authority, and, ultimately, in the ability of science to function as an action system.

XREF: Relates to Luhmann's systems theory on trust as social reduction of complexity.

To expose the trust problem which is contained in such analysis clearly depends on illuminating the background which permits authority to be authority in the first place. Authority is always a representation of a complexity which is not explained in detail.

XREF: Connects to critiques of expertise and institutional trust, e.g., discussions of epistemic dependence on authorities.

Accordingly, authority is not a matter of wisdom bestowed by grace on a few people, but a matter of some specific competence learned, and practised, within the framework of the division of labour.

In this form, authority also has need of trust that communicates the truth. This differentiates it from other forms of takeover by alien sets of assumptions coming, for example, from power. The advance made by one who trusts consists here in the uncritical use of information which others have drawn up – accordingly he commits himself to the danger that the information may prove false, or not what he anticipated. On the other hand, the object of trust in the case of functional authority, as with money, is basically abstract and thus intangible. It is often the case that one has an authentic sender, but he is only the last link in a long chain of information-processing. Does one trust the chemist, or his assistant, or the doctor, or is it medicine, science or technology?

DEFINE: Distinguishes functional authority from authority based on power or alien assumption-sets; defines trust in this context as uncritical use of distantly produced information.

Certainly, the citizen casts his vote. But to vote is not to mandate someone to represent one's interests. What is declared as the main aim of this institution is for the elected representatives of the people to reach decisions according to criteria of the public good. But they demand sovereign power to take decisions, and one cannot trust a sovereign. An ultimate power to decide generates its own norms. In this case a trust can at most refer to an awareness of the limits on sovereignty.

This process is made trustworthy because it is reached by many small stages and is open to information at all of them, so that, although the process is carried out centrally in order to guarantee the unanimity of the decision, sovereignty cannot be exercised at one stroke, i.e. arbitrarily. It would seem that even the social system learns that it is best to offer trust in small doses which individually do not put too much at risk.

The shift to system trust seems to facilitate the learning of trust, to make inner guarantees largely dispensable, or rather to replace them with functioning interaction. But, on the other hand, it seems to make the control of trust more difficult. It makes trust diffuse and thereby resistant. It becomes almost immune to individual disappointments, which can always be explained away and passed off as a special case, while personal trust can be sabotaged by trivial treacheries. System trust does not always have to be learned anew from scratch.

XREF: Connects to discussions of institutional resilience and why people maintain faith in systems despite obvious failures.

It seems, for example, to bring to mind the situation of the person who does not check what others have worked out, or the kind of person who measures the political system according to his own individual expectations about decisions, or the situation of the person who can satisfy an individual set of needs with the help of money. On the other hand, trust in the large reduction mechanisms is so inevitable that it does not need to be consciously perceived as a subjective activity which one can continue or drop, as in the case of personal trust. Thus system trust hardly becomes an open matter for public discussion, and, again, the fact that it is something latent helps maintain its integrity.

DEFINE: Contrasts system trust (trust in large reduction mechanisms) with personal trust, explaining why system trust is rarely consciously perceived or publicly debated.

Finally, control over system trust demands increasing expert knowledge. That goes without saying in financial affairs and truth. Here only an expert can make even a cursory examination of what are indications of trustworthiness. But today even an appraisal of political forces and developments demands an exacting amount of detailed knowledge, mainly about people, roles and organizations, which can only be gained by taking an active part in the political process. In practical terms, control over trust can be exercised only as someone's main occupation. Everybody else must rely on the specialist involved in such control, and thus is forced to remain on the periphery of events.

Although system trust is shown to be more or less absorbed, more or less latent, it is fundamentally different from the 'naive' experience of familiarity with the everyday world. In system trust one is continually conscious that everything that is accomplished is being produced, that each action has been decided on after comparison with other possibilities. System trust counts on explicit processes for the reduction of complexity, i.e. on people, not nature. The great civilizing processes of transition to system trust give people a stable attitude towards what is contingent in a complex world, make it possible to live with the realization that everything could be otherwise.

DEFINE: Contrasts system trust with naive everyday familiarity: system trust involves ongoing consciousness that outcomes are produced by human decisions and processes.

It may be that in extreme cases there are people, or social systems, who earn trust simply by remaining fixedly and immovably what they are. Such an ontification of the substance of trust, together with an appropriate theoretical representation by means of the idea of trustworthy qualities or virtues, presupposes an environment which is immoveable and neither dangerous nor very complex (or else a compensating 'hereafter' which heals hurts and explains the inexplicable).

To the extent that this reflexivity becomes conscious, personal trust too becomes a variant of system trust. Only trust in the capacity for self-presentation to be reflected contains a guarantee for suitable continuity of behaviour under difficult, changing conditions. Only this form of trust regards the other person as truly free – and not merely as a being with certain constant characteristics. Only this form of trust can make itself conscious of the function of trust, the function of the reduction of complexity in the face of the freedom of the other person, and in this awareness find an orientation.

DEFINE: The highlight distinguishes naive personal trust from its conscious, reflexively aware variant, which works like system trust by reducing complexity in the face of another's freedom.

The basis of all trust is the presentation of the individual self as a social identity which builds itself up through interaction and which corresponds to its environment. Whoever presents himself from the outset as unapproachable – and this can be done in many different ways, such as by a snub, by walking past really quickly, by offending against customary demeanour or behaviour in a way which shows that one places no value on it – whoever distances himself in this way is in no position to acquire trust because he offers no opportunities for learning and testing. He may demonstrate that he is a relatively predictable factor in the situation, but one cannot trust him. Whoever wants to win trust must take part in social life and be in a position to build the expectations of others into his own self-presentation.

The path to trust is through a transformative response to the expectations of others. One can fulfil them better than expected, or in a different way. Where indifference was expected, a certain outgoing quality can convince, provided it is not overdone. Where careful, reserved remarks are the norm, one can win out by being cautiously incautious. Even superiors, who are accustomed to be treated respectfully and by a restraint of criticism from their underlings, rarely appear put off by a carefree and brisk approach to business, as long as the approach is not overdone and does not degenerate either into pointlessness or into presumptuous familiarity. The tactical rule for such strategies of trust lies in recognizing functionally equivalent possibilities and in paying attention to their boundaries. To acquire personal trust means withdrawing standardized expectations, as it were, from one's partner, and replacing them with those that only he, as a distinctive personality, with a unique style, can guarantee to fulfil.

XREF: Relates to social capital and network theory ideas about how trust is built through differentiated, personalized exchanges rather than conformity. SEED: Could develop an essay on the boundary between strategic trust-building and impression management or brown-nosing.

Thus in large organizations, in which the official extent of responsibility in the higher echelons far exceeds the individual's capacity for responsibility (i.e. the ability to process information), there arise very significant relationships of personal trust between superiors and underlings, between line executives and staff positions, between parliamentarians and the higher civil service. In these relationships one side, because of its overburdening responsibility, is obliged to confer personal trust, which cannot be admitted and articulated, and the other side seizes on this trust, is sensitive to its conditions and limits, cultivates it, uses it as a basis for personal influence over the truster – and justifies it by behaving in an appropriate manner.

XREF: Connects to theories of bounded rationality (Simon) and delegation in principal-agent relationships, plus informal power structures in organizations.

Once again these analyses illuminate in the clearest possible way what constitutes the background to all trust – the problem of complexity. By means of trust, the truster unburdens himself of complexity which he cannot sustain. Anyone who wishes to abuse his trust must take this complexity upon himself. He will have to burden himself with complex demands on behaviour, to ensure the most wide-ranging command of the relevant information and complete control of the information available to the truster, with the result that he himself will be in danger of collapsing under the pressure of complexity. Among the most important strategies for reducing fraud, therefore, is a time-limit on breach of trust, and also, if possible, on contact with the victim of the fraud.

XREF: Connects to economics of asymmetric information and principal-agent theory, where monitoring costs and information asymmetry create the space for opportunism.

As against this, anyone who does not merely let himself be caught up and hemmed in by trust emotionally, but takes part in arranging the relationship of trust and what its subjects and its limitations are, is likely to recognize sooner the advantages of a joint reduction of complexity.

Trust accumulates as a kind of capital which opens up more opportunities for more extensive action but which must be continually used and tended and which commits the user to a trustworthy self-presentation, from which he can only escape with great difficulty. One can win trust by means of deceitful self-presentation, but one can only maintain it and use it as continually available capital if one continues the deception. Illusion then turns unnoticed into reality, the qualities which were at first deceitful grow into habits, the advantages of trust serve as an instrument of obligation. Trust educates.

XREF: Echoes the idea of endogenous preferences formation — that performative behavior gradually reconstructs genuine disposition. Connects to sociological accounts of role-taking and habit formation. SEED: A contrarian angle on the ethics of deception: sustained deception may produce genuine virtue, making the dishonest agent 'educate' themselves into integrity. Potential essay on virtue by pretense.

The consolidation of trust therefore constitutes an advantageous, but also a heavily presuppositional reformulation for the primordial problem of social order, the existence of a free alter ego. Instead of arming oneself against the unpredictability of the other person in the full complexity of all possibilities, one can seek to reduce complexity by concentrating on the creation and maintenance of mutual trust, and engage in more meaningful action in respect of a problem now more narrowly defined.

XREF: Connects to sociological theory of trust (Luhmann's systems theory) and to negotiation/partnership risk-reduction strategies.

One of the important, far-reaching examples of a simple mechanism which is applied to itself is the learning of learning. In its elementary form learning occurs as it were incidentally, as a by-product of action and the perception of its consequences. Only when the learning process is differentiated and becomes functionally independent does it become possible to learn in a concentrated manner, systematically, and over a long period of time. It then becomes worthwhile to divert a part of the effort into the rationalization of the process of learning itself, and to learn to teach and to learn to learn.

DEFINE: Clarifies the concept of 'learning of learning' — a self-applied mechanism where learning becomes its own object.

With the positivity of law and the parallel development of the positivity of purposes, the decision-making organization of the state can be made, in a true sense, sovereign. The state's powers too must then be organized in a reflexive way. Ways of overpowering power-holders and forms of legitimate change of power must be institutionalized. Only when the overpowering of power is assured can the potential of power be increased without hesitation.

XREF: Connects to theories of constitutionalism and the paradox of sovereign power — how binding power to law paradoxically increases its strength, echoing ideas from Weber and modern rule-of-law scholarship.

Essentially the ontological opposition of reality and illusion is inappropriate for the comprehension of this reflexive relationship. For what we call illusion is reality, if it is used as a premise for further experience and action. It is a second reality. The reality of symbolically represented identities, the reality of the social reduction of complexity, is certainly particularly susceptible to disturbance. In the end, however, every reality can be destroyed. That alone is no reason to call what can be destroyed 'illusion' and what destroys 'reality'.

DEFINE: Re-defines 'illusion' as a 'second reality' that functions as reality when used as a premise for action, rejecting the simple reality/illusion opposition.

In the light of this reflexivity, personal trust becomes to a significant extent trust in tact and discipline in the way one expresses oneself. In this form, it becomes transparent without its function being lost. Thus, one can see through one's partner's presentation, and, seeing it as a presentation, one is able to weigh and react in a balanced way and assess how far it is likely to go. One can estimate what strains personal trust can take without breaking down, in which role-context it belongs and in which it does not, and where its weak points lie, which should not be exposed – except if one does so intentionally and accepts responsibility for the consequences.

DEFINE: "Reflexivity" in personal trust means the ability to see through the other's presentation while still treating it as a meaningful performance — transparency without loss of function.

True seen-through trust has one serious disadvantage in comparison with spontaneous trust. It demands more caution, more consideration from the truster. He does not trust the other person directly, but rather trusts the grounds on which trust 'still works'. He is thereby continually conscious of other possibilities. What this means can be made clear with regard to the function of trust in reducing complexity. Seen-through trust fulfils this function less well than spontaneous trust. It places a greater burden of complexity on the actor and is thus psychologically more difficult.

The purchasing power of money is trusted, although currency is known to rest on an overdraft, so to speak, and is not covered by a corresponding value in the institutions which issue the currency. It rests instead on the expectation, supported by experience, that not everyone wants to turn his money credits into real cash simultaneously. One relies on the fact that the state has the power to guarantee peace and make decisions about problems, although one knows that its power of coercion is not adequate to do these things, if a considerable percentage of the population were to rebel at the same time or refuse to recognize decisions.

XREF: Connects to sociological concepts of collective belief and legitimacy, and to the idea that institutions are sustained by shared fictions rather than physical resources.

These considerations confirm our conjecture that, under the conditions set by civilized society, personal trust becomes a type of system trust in the ability of systems to maintain conditions or performances which are, within certain limits, identical. Other examples of system trust also show this characteristically reflex engagement with fictions that is functioning. For example, whether one is a member or outsider, one trusts large organized systems which process goods or data, although one knows that the objectives of these systems are not the goals of the people who work in them. Rather one knows that everyone concerned in them must be motivated by complex, prone-to-failure and not readily visible detours to produce four-fruit jam, insurance notices, or whatever.

In all these cases it is a characteristic mark of civilizing trust that it incorporates an element of reflexivity. Trust is not concerned with knowing the essential truth about a matter but with the success of the reduction of complexity, with the fact that the taking of the risk involved has proved itself in social life and thus becomes a motivating force, which yields further attestation. Trust is concerned with itself in so far as it is necessary to ensure its ability to extend the fulfilment of its function. And in this form it can achieve more; it can absorb more uncertainty with less risk.

DEFINE: Defines civilizing trust as reflexive, complexity-reducing risk absorption rather than truth-seeking. Trust's success is measured by social efficacy, not accuracy.

If one looks more closely, several different types of trust in trust can be distinguished according to which type one places trust in. The individual can trust his own trust, just as he can feel his feelings or think about his thinking. Furthermore, he can trust that others trust him, and finally that others trust third parties in the same way as he does. The possibilities for application, the risks and the consequent problems all vary according to which type is chosen.

DEFINE: This distinguishes reflexive trust (trust in one's own trust), reciprocal trust (that others trust me), and mediated trust (that others trust third parties).

The first two cases belong typically to the domain of personal trust. I can trust my own trust in another person if I attribute to my own trust the ability to motivate others, and if, furthermore, I find out the ways in which my partner is affected by being trusted. With this in mind, I can create for myself an additional motive for trust. This engenders more opportunities for trust in the face of increasing risk. Or I can trust the trust of others in me. This makes it possible for me to base my plans of action on the trust of others, whether it be to disappoint it or to discharge the resulting obligations. I can, for example, dismantle my own cautious strategies of self-presentation, if I am sure that the other person ‘will know what I mean’ if I criticize, tease or annoy him. This increasing of the potential of trust involves, like every reflexive process, a double risk – firstly in that I, myself, can suddenly doubt whether the trust of the other person really goes as far as I had supposed, and secondly in that the other person, without my noticing it, loses trust in my good intentions and my ‘not so intended’ action begins to undermine the relationship.

Whereas in personal trust reflexivity is an exception, system trust builds upon the fact that others also trust and that this common quality of trust becomes conscious. Certainly it is not necessary in each individual case to remember that the ability to function rests on trust in trust. It seems rather that familiarity with money, power and truth is learned as behaviour and that typically the reflexivity of this mechanism remains latent, as does its highly risky character. Such latency can make the creation of trust more simple and act as a safeguard against uncontrollable fears – what would happen if everyone suddenly wanted to cash in all their money, or if everyone appeared armed on the streets. Nevertheless, the rational basis of system trust lies in the trust placed in the trust of other people.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's broader theory of trust and social systems — the reflexivity of trust-in-trust is central to how institutions like money and law function.

Distrust, however, is not just the opposite of trust; as such, it is also a functional equivalent for trust. For this reason one can (and must) make a choice between trust and distrust.

DEFINE: Reframes distrust as functionally equivalent to trust rather than a mere absence — both serve the same social coordination role.

These negative strategies give rise to distrust of an emotionally tense and often frantic character which distinguishes it from trust. Its repertoire extends from the definition of the role-partner as an enemy who must be fought, through a boundless accumulation of personal reserves for cases of emergency, up to the renunciation of all needs which can be written off. Strategies of combat, of the mobilizing of reserves, or of renunciation, make possible a conduct of existence based on distrust and define its situation in a way which makes it possible to act rationally within the circumscribed area. The consciousness of distrust is thus often lost and the strategies of reduction demarcated by it become autonomous, become a habitual outlook on life, a routine.

DEFINE: Clarifies that distrust is structured through three distinct strategies — combat, mobilizing reserves, and renunciation — rather than being a single emotional state.

Apart, therefore, from trust and distrust, one must take familiarity into account – a familiarity with the world which makes typical expectations possible at all, and which cannot be denied or rejected in toto. Even someone who suffers from fear or loathing of the world must take his medicine, pay his taxes, brush his teeth, take his car for testing and, in doing so, accept the world. The dependence on familiar world structures and types of meaning cannot be thrown off.

DEFINE: Clarifies familiarity as an irreducible third component beyond trust and distrust in how we relate to the world.

Distrust can consequently develop out of unquestioning familiarity on the one hand, through the sudden appearance of inconsistencies – one hears an inexplicable noise in the middle of the night – and, on the other, through a reversal of trust, if symptoms are perceived which are symbolically discrediting. Past history will remain important to the way in which distrust is articulated, the emotional tone of its expression and its durability.

If there is a swing from trust to distrust – and the same is true in the rarer reverse case – then the distruster adapts his behaviour to this new pattern of expectation and thus makes his change of attitude socially apparent. Distrust is made manifest by distrustful behaviour. Interpersonal behaviour is not a matter merely of ad hoc experience but something interpreted in terms of underlying 'attitudes', and used for the formation of expectations. Thus the distruster, willingly or unwillingly, can hardly avoid his distrust being perceived in him and attributed to him. Hostile feelings are difficult to keep hidden, and the cautious defences which now seem necessary betray the intention.

Someone who sees himself as the object of such expressions of distrust will hardly be disposed to look at himself from the perspective of distrust and seek the cause of it in himself. The distrust remains for him objectively inexplicable, and he therefore attributes it to the person who distrusts him. In so far as he continues the relationship at all, he will respond at first perhaps with explanations, with forbearance, then with caution and finally with distrust himself. He finds himself relieved of moral obligation by the distrust which is brought against him and given the freedom to act in his own interests, or indeed he actually feels the need to revenge himself for this undeserved treatment. And thus he gives distrust additional justification and further nourishment.

XREF: A self-fulfilling prophecy in social relations — parallels the Pygmalion/Rosenthal effect and standard distrust spirals in conflict theory.

Consequently, distrust has an inherent tendency to endorse and reinforce itself in social interaction – a good example, perhaps indeed the very kernel, of those processes to which Merton devoted a classic essay under the title of 'self-fulfilling prophecy'. Underlying these processes is, as it were, an inverted feedback principle, that is, a wrongly or insecurely adapted system brings itself into equilibrium with its environment not by correcting itself on the basis of its effects but by finding its effects endorsed and hence offering occasions for new causes.

XREF: Connects to Merton's classic self-fulfilling prophecy essay; also echoes the inverted-feedback concept found in systems theory and cybernetics.

Since in most cases the objective situation contains features to which both attitudes could be fixed, what is more decisive than anything is an indeterminate preconception about the selective tendency and the direction of symbolic fixing – often the result of a chance first impression. It picks out the critical variables, the evidence which counts, and, with these, also defines the criteria whose variation in the objective situation takes on the character of a threshold experience and suggests the change from trust to distrust or vice versa.

Furthermore, we have to reckon, at this point, with the institutions of punishment, penance and pardon. They have many functions, important among which is the fixing of deadlines by which an affair is closed and thus offers no further legitimate occasion for distrust. Moreover, centralizing the right of punishment within the system has the function in 'difficult' cases of interrupting the circle of increasing distrust.

Despite this openness and the uncertainty of detailed knowledge, at least one far-reaching systems theory hypothesis can be formulated – a social system, which requires or cannot avoid distrusting behaviour among its members for certain functions, needs at the same time mechanisms which prevent distrust from gaining the upper hand, and, from being reciprocated by a process of reciprocal escalation, turned into a destructive force. Above all there must be strategies and types of individual behaviour which are socially recognized and easily understood and which intercept and neutralize acts of distrust, thus rendering them, from the point of view of the system, 'accidental', insignificant, and therefore functionless aberrations. This function is performed above all by certain forms of presentation, or by the subsequent explanation of acts of distrust as involuntary actions, as determined purely by experience, as mistakes, as upsets caused by external factors, or as duties required by roles – that is, interpretations which make possible the carrying out of distrusting actions but which explain away distrust as an attitude.

XREF: This echoes Niklas Luhmann's systems theory approach to trust, where trust is a mechanism for reducing social complexity and distrust must be contained to preserve system functioning.

Feelings accomplish external and internal reduction in a single operation – that is their strength and their weakness. They reduce the possibilities of the environment by settling preference on one object, and accordingly at the same time establish internal possibilities of processing experience. The affective system, as one says, 'identifies' with its object. In allowing no alternatives either outside or inside, feelings are inelastic, fixed, non-transferable. They can only be reorganized by being destroyed and remade. Every breakdown of the emotional relationship would restore the crushing complexity of the world. Anxiety therefore lurks in the background of feeling and motivates the continuance of the relationship, if it receives any kind of confirmation.

DEFINE: Defines the affective system's dual function: external reduction (narrowing environmental options) and internal reduction (structuring experience), which paradoxically produces rigidity and anxiety-driven maintenance.

Moreover, emotions form a foundation for entering into relationships of trust with other people to whom the emotion itself does not extend. Anyone who is emotionally rooted in a circle of people, a home, a role constellation with tasks and duties, is thereby supported in opening up relationships of trust outside this narrow circle. The emotional attachment of the child to his family is, for example, the foundation for the learning of all trust. In this way readiness to trust can survive as a habitual and proven attitude long after the emotions to which it owes its existence have faded.

XREF: Connects to attachment theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth) and Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, where basic trust emerges from early caregiver relationships.

Under these circumstances one may anticipate a need for functionally equivalent problem-solving mechanisms which partly replace feeling as a basis for trust and partly restrict it to increasingly private functionings. Such an alternative, assurance in social self-presentation, seems to gain in importance in the process of the development of civilization.

DEFINE: Introduces 'assurance in social self-presentation' as a mechanism distinct from feeling-based trust.

People and social systems strive, in their self-presentation, as we have already shown, to draw a consistent picture of themselves and make it socially accepted. Since other people and social systems also have an interest in building up reliable expectations with regard to the people around them, in seeing them as enduring identities, there develops in social intercourse a type of expressive language which enables actions to be attributed to people or social systems, and not only causally but, indeed, also symbolically, as expressing their essence, their self.

For even bestowing trust is an act of self-presentation. The person who trusts presents himself as someone who is by his nature inclined to bestow trust. If the trust then turns out to be misplaced, the person who trusted is not only disappointed, but in some circumstances also exposed to ridicule. It then becomes obvious that he was too stupid to see through the situation, that he let himself be taken advantage of – a victim of the equivocal ethic which says that one should trust, but not too blindly. At this point, it comes to be something which depends on practice and expertise in self-presentation.

Whether readiness to trust is achieved more through emotion or more through flexibility of self-presentation, in every case it rests on the structure of the system which confers trust. Only because the security of the system is structurally guaranteed is it possible to do away with the safety precautions for particular actions in specific situations. Readiness to trust is an important instance of the general rule that the absorption of complexity through structures can relieve the burden of action.

DEFINE: Clarifies Luhmann's concept of trust as resting on system structure rather than individual or emotional guarantees.

Until now we have been discussing the question of readiness to trust on supposition that the materialization of trust depends on whether a system is ready and in a position to create trust. That was the perspective of this chapter which we must at its close modify, and reveal as a variable.

XREF: This reframes the earlier assumption that trust readiness is a fixed system property, complicating the chapter's own framework. Builds on: "Trust evolves from interpersonal emotion to performance-based system trust."

We have already, in the chapter on system trust, encountered forms of relatively inevitable trust formation, which must function to a large extent regardless of individual motivational structures, and which furthermore are not controlled from outside but internally, within the systems which demand trust. Their security of function, and also the possibility of creating trust in trust, depend on this indifference. Thus the question as to the structures and processes of the systems which bestow trust recedes and becomes less meaningful; it does not depend so much on the readiness to trust. The trusting systems are, as it were, relieved of responsibility for their trust.

If one also takes this possibility into consideration then it becomes clear how complex and richly varied the social conditions for the formation of trust are. In part they operate through the structures of the system which invests trust; in part they affect it from outside. In the first case it is principally a question of social conditions for the expression of emotion or successful self-presentation – a social climate which honours personal bonds such as love or faithfulness, and does not expose them to ridicule, as in the figure of the cuckolded husband; which institutionalizes tact, and knows enough escape routes for self-preservation in difficult situations. In this way system structures for trust are reinforced. In the second case, due to the provisions made in their environment, system structures themselves are relieved of the burden of absorbing the uncertainty resulting from this engagement. This occurs in the case of system trust in so far as their possibilities of choice are narrowed down or interpreted away, and trust is confirmed in the short term during the course of interaction. Or it may be that the breach of trust is controlled by sufficiently tight sanctions to reduce the truster's risk.

DEFINE: Distinguishes trust reinforced from inside system structures (via emotional expression, self-presentation, tact) versus relieved from outside via environment provisions like narrowed choices and sanctions.

The very multitude of the ways of creating trust makes it fruitless to search for general formulae. Rather one is forced to recognize that it is just this multitude of possibilities which provides some safeguard against the breakdown of trust in society. Trust is created – one way or the other. And highly differentiated societies, which need more trust for the reduction of their complexity than simple societies, must perhaps also hold in readiness correspondingly more varied mechanisms for the creation and stabilization of trust. They must therefore make more demands on the readiness to trust inherent in their systems and at the same time ease the burdens placed on that readiness to trust to a greater extent than is the case in simple societies.

DEFINE: Contrasts trust as a set of varied mechanisms against the search for a single general formula.

A moral principle which also acknowledges its opposite must be reliant on practical situations that can be unanimously and unequivocally interpreted, and where it can be firmly settled whether the principle or its opposite is to be applied. In so far as situations for such interpretation are lacking, the principle loses both its value as a means of orientation and its normative function. For it could provide justification for each and every decision.

QUESTION: If a principle can justify every decision, does it truly bind conduct at all, or only in idealized cases?

Trust is not a means that can be chosen for particular ends, much less an ends/means structure capable of being optimized. Nor is trust a prognosis; its correctness cannot be measured by the occurrence of the predicted event and after some experiences have been reduced to probability values. These types of techniques, which are significant within the framework of decision-making models, have, as does trust, the function of reducing complexity. They are functional equivalents for trust, but not acts of trust in the true sense. As far as they extend, trust is unnecessary. They can replace trust, just as, conversely, the need for trust as a complementary way of absorbing uncertainty is a result of the limited effectiveness of those decision-making techniques.

DEFINE: Distinguishes genuine trust from functional equivalents like probability-based decision models, which reduce complexity but are not acts of trust.

Trust is rational in regard to the function of increasing the potential of a system for complexity. Without trust only very simple forms of human co-operation that can be transacted on the spot are possible, and even individual action is much too sensitive to disruption to be capable of being planned, without trust, beyond the immediately assured moment. Trust is indispensable in order to increase a social system’s potential for action beyond these elementary forms. Completely new types of actions, above all such as are not immediately satisfying and hence have to be artificially motivated, become possible in a system which can activate trust. Through trust a system gains time, and time is the critical variable in the construction of complex system structures. The satisfying of needs can be delayed, and nevertheless guaranteed. Instrumental action, oriented towards distant effects, can become institutionalized if the temporal horizon of a system is suitably extended by means of trust. The availability of liquid financial resources, power and truth, all mechanisms dependent on trust, makes possible an indifference on the part of the system towards numerous events in the environment and thus a gain in reaction time.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's systems theory and sociological concepts of trust as a complexity-reduction mechanism.

By means of binary schematization they are treated, however, as if one could be turned into the other by mere negation. Thus the transition from the one form to the other is made easier, both come closer together precisely in that they are thought of as opposites, and in this lies the gain in rationality. For the simplicity and directness of the transition to the opposite makes tolerable a greater risk in determining the system. The relative inferiority, the relatively low 'level of technicality', of the trust mechanism in comparison with the truth-code or the legal-code can be seen, among other things, in the greater difficulty of reversing negation – trust is easier to transform into distrust than is distrust into trust.

XREF: Relates to Luhmann's systems theory and the asymmetry of social trust dynamics versus binary codes like truth/falsity or legal/illegal. Builds on: "Distrust reinforces itself through a self-fulfilling prophecy feedback loop."

When related to systems and seen as general mechanisms, trust and distrust can be increased side by side, in so far as aspects and situations can be sufficiently differentiated. Admittedly, no further indications can be gained on this abstract level of consideration as to whether one should trust or distrust in any particular case.

A system-rational increase in the effectiveness of trust will depend on all the aspects of trust formation which we have treated in the course of our inquiry and cannot catalogue once again here.

For many systems it can be vitally necessary that they are in a position to invest trust in their environment so that they can take part in relationships which are only to be achieved through mutual trust. The system members must then be able to display trust externally also. In the lower positions in modern large organizations, for example, internal relationships can be programmed in such detail that trust between members becomes virtually unnecessary because uncertainty in behaviour is overcome by other mechanisms.

DEFINE: Contrasts positional trust in lower ranks (programmed away) with externally displayed trust needed at the system boundary.

One finds system boundaries characterized as trust boundaries particularly in all social systems engaged in operations which are not supposed to be revealed to the outside or are even illegal and therefore have to be kept secret.

XREF: Connects to sociological concepts of systems theory and boundary maintenance, possibly Luhmann's work on social systems and trust.

In the case of external relationships such system-structural reasons for trust and distrust are irrelevant and things come to depend more on the specific learning and confirming of trust relationships in the contact between system and environment, on the freedom of traffic allowed by the system boundaries, or on the strength of the system and the cover it guarantees its members in the case of distrustful behaviour leading to disruptions and conflicts in relationships with the environment.

DEFINE: Distinguishes internal from external trust: internal trust rests on system-structural reasons, while external trust depends on boundary interactions and system strength.

A greater measure of trust can be established internally by means of selective processes for the choice of members within the framework of the selection criteria. On the other hand, on this basis a sharp distrust of a quite specific kind can be elevated to the level of formal duty, for the purposes of supervision, for example.

XREF: Connects to organizational theory on trust and control mechanisms — how hiring criteria serve dual functions of building trust and institutionalizing suspicion.

The more effectively the environment of a system is protected by more encompassing systems from too intense, unpredictable fluctuations, the more effectively the system can move over to directing its actions by internally rationalized decision-making techniques, and replace trust with calculations of probability. Whether, and under what conditions, such a process of substitution is itself rational can likewise only be judged within the framework of our comprehensive idea of rationality, whereby trust, which has apparently come about 'irrationally', may appear rational if and in so far as it performs the functions which serve the maintenance of the system.

DEFINE: Clarifies how trust functions as a substitute for rational calculation within systems protected from environmental fluctuations.

One can trust someone in matters of love but not in money matters; one can trust his knowledge but not his skill, his moral intention but not his ability to report objectively, his taste but not his discretion. The reason for this specificity can be simply that trust was learned in this restricted sphere and has foundered in other respects. It may, however, also go back to a selective interest of the system to which the parties concerned belong and which even structures the learning process itself.

DEFINE: Clarifies that trust is not a general trait but is differentiated by specific domains (love, money, knowledge, skill), with causes ranging from where it was learned to system-level structures.

In organizations, checks can be set up which operate under a specified order to distrust, and here too place others, often even the people who are themselves controlled, in a position of trusting the functioning of this distrust. There are even roles, for example, those of researchers or judges, where, within the specific horizon of their task, trust is allowed to be treated as distrust, and where reports about trust are regarded with distrust. Trust in systems as a whole can, as we saw, depend decisively on trust being interrupted at critical points and distrust being switched on. Conversely, only in systems which are trusted can distrust be so institutionalized and restricted that it is not regarded as personal and reciprocated, so remains protected from escalating into conflicts.

Characteristically, the organization in which trust and distrust are the object of expectations with regard to aspects of a work task does not completely remove the choice between these two possibilities from the actor. Even the truster must retain a modicum of distrust – he must, for instance, intervene if his colleague gives an opinion which is obviously false. And neither can the distruster, as in the case of supervision, take his justified distrust to extremes without becoming a liability to the organization. What in ethics is expected from the nature of things is performed by means of the organization and specification of the system, that is, clear directions in a particular case as to whether trust or distrust is appropriate and rational.

It avoids a clear-cut ethical instruction. Only from the point of view of its function can it be understood as a whole and compared with other functionally equivalent mechanisms.

Builds on: "Trust reduces social complexity by narrowing the problem of the other person."

Only from the point of view of its function can it be understood as a whole and compared with other functionally equivalent mechanisms. Trust reduces social complexity by exceeding available information and generalizing expectations of behaviour in that it replaces missing information with an internally guaranteed security. It thus remains dependent on other reduction mechanisms developed in parallel with it, for example those of law, of organization and, of course, those of language, but it cannot, however, be reduced to them.

DEFINE: Defines trust functionally as a mechanism that 'generalizes expectations' and 'replaces missing information' — a precise conceptual framework. QUESTION: How does the 'internally guaranteed security' distinguish trust from mere optimism or faith in other systems?

In such circumstances it is not possible to proceed step by step and thereby presuppose what power is. Instead, we must try to use more general concepts, which are in use elsewhere and which might serve the transfer of already established questions, and conceptual frameworks, which facilitate comparison and offer the possibility of relevant examination of other areas of interest.

DEFINE: Explains a methodological approach: when a concept like power can't be defined progressively, use general concepts from elsewhere to enable comparison and examination.

Alternatively, one could make use of a sociological technique (of proven value ever since Durkheim) of framing questions so as to reveal the basic premises of the institutions of the lifeworld, their existing interpretations and understandings. The questions might be the following: If power has to be a causal process, what non-causal foundations of causality are there? If power is to be reckoned with as exchange, what non-exchangeable foundations are there for exchange? If power is a game played between opponents, what are the non-game-playing foundations of the game? This question-framing technique refers back to society as a condition of the possibility of power, and seeks a theory of power indirectly, by way of a theory of society.

DEFINE: Describes the Durkheim-derived sociological technique of revealing basic premises by questioning foundations.

In order to bridge a greater degree of differentiation, these systems develop more highly generalized and, at the same time, more highly specialized communication media, which are assigned to societally more significant subsystems. This connection cannot be further elaborated here. Our current, partial, task consists in clarifying what is involved when power is treated as a symbolically generalized communication medium, and when analyses of power are placed in the context of a theory of society.

DEFINE: Introduces the concept of symbolically generalized communication media, with power being the specific medium under analysis.

The invention and spread of writing seem historically to have been the especial cause of the development of symbolic communication media. Writing greatly widened the potential for communication in society beyond the interaction of people immediately present and thus removed it from control by concrete interaction systems. Without writing it is impossible to create complex power chains in political and administrative bureaucracies, let alone democratic control over political power.

XREF: Connects to themes in the history of media technology and how communication systems shape political structures, echoing arguments from Ong, Goody, and McLuhan about writing's transformative effects.

All communication media assume social situations with the possibility of choice on both sides, in other words, situations of double contingent selectivity. That is precisely what gives these media their function of transmitting selections from alter to ego while preserving their selectivity. To this extent, the initial problem in all symbolically generalized communication media is the same; what applies to love or truth applies to power. In each case the influential communication relates to a partner who is to be directed in the making of their selections.

DEFINE: Explains the foundational condition of symbolically generalized media: both parties choose from possibilities, and media transmit selections while preserving that selectivity.

Power must therefore be distinguished from coercion (Zwang) to do something concrete and specified. The possible choices of the person being coerced are reduced to zero. In borderline cases coercion resorts to the use of physical violence and thereby to the substitution of one's own action for unattainable action from others. Power loses its function of bridging double contingency the closer it comes to coercion. Coercion means the surrender of the advantages of symbolic generalization and of steering the partner's selectivity. The person exercising coercion must himself take over the burden of selection and decision to the same degree as coercion is being exercised – for many cases we can even say that coercion has to be exercised, where there is a lack of power. The reduction of complexity is not distributed but is transferred to the person using coercion. Whether this is the sensible thing to do depends on how complex and variable are the situations where decisions about action have to be made.

DEFINE: Distinguishes power from coercion: power succeeds by symbolic generalization, while coercion offloads the burden of selection and decision onto the coercer.

The power of the power-holder is greater if he can choose from more and more diverse types of decisions for power-like assertions and it is greater if he can do this in opposition to a partner who himself has more and more diverse alternatives. Power increases with freedom on both sides, and, for example, in any given society, in proportion to the alternatives that society creates.

Firstly, hierarchies which postulate an asymmetrical distribution of power serve as substitutes. It is assumed that a superior has more power than an inferior (although in bureaucratic organizations the opposite may be normal). Another substitute is the history of the system; cases of past successes in obtaining desired outcomes in conflict situations are recalled, normalized, and generalized as expectations. This function, as a basis for comparison, goes together with the symbolic explosiveness of concerns about status and single events, which are used in a way that brings present power constellations too much to the foreground. Thirdly, there are important possibilities for substitution in semi-contractual arrangements, whereby a too-powerful partner comes to terms with those who might withdraw or be disloyal. In all these cases the direct communicative recourse to power is replaced by reference to symbols which commit both sides normatively, and at the same time take into account the presumed power differential.

DEFINE: Explains how hierarchy, history, and semi-contractual arrangements all function as substitutes that symbolically commit both sides without direct power confrontation.

The institutional anchoring and practicability of such substitutes renders exact calculations unnecessary, and even makes any attempt to do so problematic. The result of this is that if science were to produce a way of measuring power, it would alter social reality; that is to say, it would destroy the substitutes and reveal them as false assumptions.

QUESTION: What would it mean for social power to be measured? The author suggests the substitutes that power depends on are themselves part of the reality that measurement would collapse.

Accordingly, the power of the power-holder is not satisfactorily described as a cause, or even a potential cause. It can be compared rather with the complex function of a catalyst. Catalysts accelerate (or decelerate) the triggering of events; without themselves changing in the process, they cause changes in the ratio of effective connections (or probability) expected from chance connections between system and environment. Thus, in the end they produce a gain in time – always a critical factor for the construction of complex systems. In this respect – and this we will term, following Kant, the concept of schematism – they are more general than their respective products. In the process of catalysis, they do not change, or do not change to the same extent as the accelerated (or decelerated) process produces or inhibits effects.

DEFINE: Luhmann reframes power via a catalysis metaphor rather than causality, invoking Kant's schematism to generalize the concept.

The catalyst function of power is, therefore, based on very intricate causal complexes. This is precisely why power is to be understood only as a symbolically generalized communication medium. The development of abstract formulations by way of symbolically controlled selection complexes ensures at the same time that power is not seen as something dependent on direct action and interference by the power-holder on the power-subject. It is only by assuming a process of communication, that is, that the power-subject always learns by some indirect route of the selectivity (not only of the existence!) of past or future power-acts by the power-holder.

Only when, and in so far as, goods are scarce does the active claim to some of them on the part of one person become a problem for others, and this situation is then regulated by a communication medium, which transfers the action selected by the one person into the experience of the others and so makes it acceptable. In the context of scarcity, influence becomes precarious in a special way, so that, in view of this unusual situation, a specifically generalized communication medium can take shape, which makes possible the transmission of reduced complexity in this case, but not in others. This is also how truth arises. Here too, with the framework of unproblematical assumptions and beliefs, a certain improbability of information must first arise before test criteria start to function, and before a special code can be formed to regulate the identification of truth and untruth. Truth is doubt overcome.

It could further be said that love becomes necessary as a special communication code only when others' emotions and images of the world are so strongly individualized – and that means, have become so contingent – that one can no longer be sure of them, and therefore, according to cultural standards, one has to love for its own sake. And even art, as a communication medium, depends on increased contingency, i.e. the contingency of works manifestly produced, but no longer sustained by the context of specific, lifeworld purposes.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's systems theory on social differentiation and contingency as drivers of symbolic media.

Perhaps the most important difference as against older theories of power is that the theory of communication media conceptualizes the phenomenon of power on the basis of a difference between the code and the communication process and is therefore not in a position to attribute power to one of the partners as a property or as a faculty. Power 'is' code-guided communication. Attribution of power to the power-holder is regulated in this code with wide-ranging results concerning the reinforcement of motivations to comply, responsibility, institutionalization, giving specific direction to wishes for change, etc. Although both sides are acting, whatever happens is attributed solely to the power-holder.

XREF: Relates to system-theoretical accounts of power (e.g., Niklas Luhmann, Michel Foucault's relational power) that treat power as a communicative/structural phenomenon rather than a possession.

Everyday social life is determined to a much greater extent by recourse to normalized power, i.e. legal power, than by the brutal and selfish exercise of power. Exceptions limited to certain areas actually serve to illuminate this state of affairs. Intervention by legitimate force is more considerable; one simply cannot think it away without disrupting and transforming almost all normal social life. Brutality and selfishness are phenomena which are compatible with many social conditions so long as they do not undermine the dominance of institutionalized power.

DEFINE: Clarifies 'normalized power' as institutionalized/legal power versus the exceptional exercise of brute force.

The categorizing of selection as action must therefore be evaluated as a mechanism which releases systems from the imposition of equality and which makes differentiations possible. As this cannot happen on an unlimited scale, action has, as it were, again to be made captive and domesticated. The primary function of the social construction of the possibility of acting, and the specialization of control mechanisms related to this, lies in the emergence of an indirect avenue leading to the production of increased social complexity.

DEFINE: Defines 'selection as action' — a mechanism releasing systems from imposed equality and enabling differentiation.

Motives are not necessary for acting, but are necessary if actions are to be experienced as having meaning. A social order will thus be much more closely integrated at the level of the attribution of motives than at the level of action itself. The understanding of motives, therefore, helps retrospectively in recognizing whether an action has occurred at all.

The power-holder himself must be made to exercise his power, and there, in many cases, lies the greatest problem. Is it not easier for the more independent party, when in doubt, just to hold back and let things take their course? Even the motivation of the one who transmits the selection is constructed and attributed only in the communication process. And because of his power, the power-holder himself will have successes and failures attributed to, and suitable motives imposed on, him, whether he wants this or not. Thus power does not become the instrument of an already present will, it first of all generates that will. Power can then make claims on the will, can bind it, can make it absorb risks and uncertainties, can even lead it into temptation and let it miscarry.

XREF: Inverts the commonsense view that will precedes power; parallels Foucault's idea that power produces subjects rather than repressing pre-existing wills.

Power is not exercised unless the relationship of the participants to their respective avoidable alternatives is differently structured, in such a way that the power-subject, rather than the power-holder, would have a preference for avoiding his alternative – in our example, violence – and that this relationship between the way the participants relate to their avoidable alternatives can be recognized by the participants. In short, the power-code must bring about a relationability of relations.

DEFINE: Defines power as dependent on structural asymmetry in participants' avoidable alternatives, not merely on force or dominance.

Thus power rests on the fact that there are possibilities, whose realization is avoided. The avoidance of sanctions (which are and remain possible) is indispensable to the function of power. Each actual recourse to avoidable alternatives, each exercise of violence, for example, changes the communication structure in an almost irreversible way. It is in the interests of power to avoid such an occurrence. Thus, already in terms of its structural quality (and not only by reference to laws), power rests upon controlling the exceptional case.

DEFINE: Defines power structurally as resting on unrealized possibilities — control over the exceptional case, not literal force.

Power comes in at the point when the threat of withdrawing the matched funds is used in order to exact from the local authority a form of conduct (say, abstention from making any remarks critical of central government) not originally envisaged in the programme of central grants.

DEFINE: Clarifies the mechanism of 'power' — it emerges not from the grant itself but from the threat of withdrawing already-matched funds.

Only on the basis of relatively complex assumptions about a power-code does power begin to 'flow', i.e. to take the form of a process which transmits reduced complexity from one decision to another. The liquidity of power is the effect of its being a suitable code – just as with money. The impression of 'flow' arises because events (here, actions) take place sequentially, their selectivity being related to one another by means of a code in the sense that selections presuppose or complete one another reciprocally.

XREF: Parallels Luhmann's own treatment of money as a generalized symbolic medium; structural coupling between power and money as media.

One can see that what came most readily to hand in the process of development towards advanced societies was not the actual specialization of an appropriate decision-making power, but the claim that knowledge was identical to decision-making competence, and that truth was identical to power. Under these circumstances, as can be readily ascertainable from accounts of Far Eastern civilizations, it can be presumed that there are few alternative-rich situations available to the power-subject.

QUESTION: Interesting to pursue: does the author think the equation of knowledge/power is a deliberate claim by rulers rather than a natural development? Also, the Far Eastern civilizations evidence is worth checking.

If one treats power, along with Kurt Holm, for example, as ability to do damage, increase in power corresponds to the extent of the damage which the power-holder can cause, and/or in the extent of the counter-power which could effectively prevent the damage. Such a starting point does have advantages for methodology and measurement. However, it does not grasp the function characteristic of power of creating order – or does so only indirectly, by way of a theory of the threat of power. The close association of the powerful with the dangerous is really only adequate for archaic societies and archaic ways of thinking, for societies without differentiated communication media.

The function to be performed is the transfer of reduced complexity, which becomes more critical the more complex the intersubjectively constituted world turns out to be. The conditions for increasing this transfer of reduced complexity are institutionalized in the code of the medium.

DEFINE: Defines the function of media as transferring reduced complexity, increasing in importance as social worlds become more complex.

Reducing the relative significance of the immediate situation diminishes the burden of obtaining and evaluating information in individual cases and removes the need for a complete reorientation in shifting from one case to another. At the same time, in this manner it absorbs uncertainty. It becomes possible to form complementary expectations, and conduct on the basis of expectations, but at the risk of an expectation-oriented, but not quite situation-adequate behaviour which does not exploit the possibilities that the concrete situation may offer (for instance not exploiting a momentary weakness in the power-holder) and misses opportunities for learning.

Symbolization as such is a vital prerequisite for power formation. Language – and not by any means only the theoretical language of science – has 'dispositional concepts', such as strength, ability, potential, ready for this purpose. Such expressions hide the fact that power is a modalization of communicative processes because they combine the expression of possibility with an attribution of power to the power-holder. In this function they are parts of the power-code itself.

DEFINE: Explains how dispositional concepts like 'strength' and 'potential' function as modalizations that attribute power while obscuring its communicative-process origin.

As symbolized potentials, conceptual arrangements have identifiable characteristics. They achieve simplification by dispensing with illustrating or anticipating what is possible. They are not models, maps or plans; they do not need to resemble what is possible. Instead they take for granted – almost as a functional equivalent for similarity – time, and opportunities which arise with time. Symbols express a stabilized possibility, a readiness of the system to act as its own catalyst which can become productive, if further conditions arise.

DEFINE: Clarifies how symbolic conceptual arrangements differ from models, maps, and plans — they rely on time rather than resemblance to encode possibility.

In the area of communication media even this is not an isolated case. Thus, in the economic code of property the simple rule that one party's assets mean, simultaneously and to an identical degree, the lack of assets of another is, at a certain stage in the development of the code, given a secondary codification through the mechanism of money. The money-code doubles the opportunities of becoming an owner of property by means of money symbols (in themselves worthless). This puts material property in motion; it can, as it were, change people and, because of this possibility, increase its value by being handed over in return for money. As nonowners of certain goods, those with money get an opportunity to acquire them, and vice versa. A comparable problem arose in the logical scheme of the medium of truth as soon as the process of negation was legitimized reflexively and was accepted in the medium-code as more reflexive. Then, to use a formulation of Bachelard's, truths became 'dialecticized' with respect to their potential for becoming untruth, and vice versa for untruths. To contemporaries of this change it appeared that the mind itself had become placed within the framework of history. But history is not a code.

XREF: Luhmann's systems theory parallels between economic and truth media codes — connects to broader media/communication theory.

Secondary codifications are one, but only one, element that increases the communication media's capacity for performing the task of transmission required by the changing societal structure. They would have to be examined more closely in the context of a general theory of communication media. In addition, increasing power in proportion to the demands which develop in society depends on further symbols which can become associated with the power-code. This increase must not be understood solely as a heightened generalization of the code-symbols on a one-dimensional scale. Rather, changes in the level of power in societies which are becoming more complex come up against a multiplicity of different problems, the solutions to which have to be institutionalized into the power-code. Not every form of problem-solving is compatible with others, and all have their malfunctions. Their overall effect determines the respective level at which socially differentiated power functions.

DEFINE: Introduces the 'power-code' as a communication media concept, where institutionalized solutions to societal problems raise the level of power.

The media-code itself therefore consists of symbolically generalized rules about the possible combination of other symbols which guide the process of selections for experiencing or acting. Included in the truth-code, for example, are general rules of logic, the current concept of truth, criteria for the acceptability of methods, but not the theories and individual insights which are offered as being possibly true in particular cases. Likewise, included in the power-code is the symbolization of the power sources, of limitations on power, etc., but not the particular selections of the power-holder, his wishes, his orders. The code itself can then outlive changes in particular subject areas and can be stabilized, relatively speaking, independently of them.

DEFINE: Distinguishes the symbolic code (general rules, logic, criteria) from the specific content (theories, orders, insights) that operates under it. The code is stable while content varies.

The plurality of levels brings about the advantages of generalization without having to pay for them with uncertainty or by sacrificing the possibility of concrete realization. Posts can be filled. At the same time as differentiation at the symbolic levels, a secondary problem arises – namely the question of whether and to what extent difficulties of communication can be transformed into code problems and transposed to that level. There are then critical thresholds in interaction which generate meta-communication about power or even a formulation of the power question. A wealth of secondary strategies is related to this. These include avoiding the possibility of infringements being noticed (or even merely the possibility of this being possible), bypassing conflicts, keeping silent about them or rendering them harmless. They can be achieved through avoiding the formation of binding precedents in cases where the power-holder withdraws, or preserving forms of deference if insubordination occurs on a given matter, etc. The conditions for the multiplicity of symbolic levels, above all the separation of position and person, presuppose the existence of organization, which implies that the results of this and the resulting strategies can best be studied in organizational milieus.

DEFINE: Clarifies how the plurality of symbolic levels and the separation of position and person enable avoidance strategies for managing power conflicts without binding precedents.

If one accepts that a distinction between media-code and the subject area of communication can be achieved, one comes to the question of whether and how the code can steer the change of subject area. Differentiating between the two levels of meaning is only justified if the code does not lay down concretely what should be ordered. The code, like language itself, also remains abstract in the sense that it does not establish a sequence according to which communication about a subject area is to take place. On the other hand, it cannot be completely indifferent to the boundaries placed around possible subjects. It defines the conditions for possible subjects which can be dealt with under this particular code, and the question is to what extent such 'conditions of possibility' at the same time take on a regulating function, giving a rough direction to the communication process.

Power serves as a catalyst for the construction of action chains. If power can be taken for granted at several points, there arises, so to speak, a temptation to form chain combinations in which the selection of one action leads to those of others or anticipates them as consequences of the completion of the former selection.

We want to talk of chains only when, and in so far as, A can arrange not only any of B's actions but specifically his exercise of power, i.e. when A has at his disposal B's power over C. Therefore, a chain does not exist if the king can command the general, if the latter can give his wife orders and she her servants, who, likewise because of their position, are able to tyrannize their neighbours. But a chain only exists if and in so far as the power-holder can intervene in the chain.

DEFINE: Distinguishes nested command hierarchies from genuine chains of power: a chain exists only when the top power-holder can intervene at every point, not merely issue orders down the line.

One probable structural characteristic of power stretched out in chain form is to create counter-flowing power, since the power of the system exceeds the potential selection capacity of a single power-holder and the ability of middle links in the chain to intervene serves them as a personal source of power. In this way power-codes are divided into 'formal' and 'informal', and the greatest agglomeration of formal/informal powers will be found at key points below the very top.

XREF: Connects to theories of organizational power and bureaucracy, where middle managers accrue informal authority beyond their formal rank. Also echoes principal-agent problems in political science.

In the scientific system, for example, processes of communication and information-processing rest not only on officially recognized criteria of truth but, in addition, very considerably on reputation. Intimate relationships are not orientated only to the code of love but also form a concrete history of interwoven personal histories, which can to a greater or lesser extent be substituted for the code. Money is in itself so complex that sub-currencies are normally not needed, but they do appear in times of crisis, especially in times of inflation – for instance in the form of moving into foreign currencies, gold, cigarettes, property and land, which, for better or worse, take over part of the function of the money-code. The relationship between formal and informal power is only another instance of this general situation.

XREF: Extends Luhmann's systems theory with a sociological ground — informal codes (reputation, personal history) substitute for formal ones (truth, love, money).

Extra codes always have three characteristics which connect with one another, namely: (1) greater concreteness and dependence on context; (2) a lesser capacity for social legitimation, and so also less 'presentability'; and, therefore, (3) for their functioning within the system, dependence, in special circumstances, on sensitivity, knowledge of the milieu, knowledge of history, trust and (!) mistrust, which are not shared in their environment.

Contrary to appearances, binary schemas serve not only to separate but also to unite opposites. They facilitate the shift from one definition of the situation to its opposite by requiring no more than a negation, the admittance of which can be regulated in the system – a technique of paradoxical integration. There is a closer connection between truth and untruth than between truth and love, for instance.

The problem lies in the presumptive completeness of the scheme, in the claim to construct the totality of the possible by means of a dichotomy. The degree of institutionalization of a communication medium can be recognized, among other things, by how far the imposition of its binary schematization is recognized independently of the concrete distribution of opportunity.

DEFINE: Defines what 'presumptive completeness' means: a dichotomy's claim to cover all possibilities while hiding actual opportunity distribution.

Even unlawful power is power – and, in fact, in a different sense to the one in which untruth is truth. It is real power which must always be taken into account by the lawful power-holder, and not simply a possibility, whose arrival one can await with curiosity and an interest to learn, while possessing the possibility of negating it.

XREF: Connects to political realism and theories of effective power versus legitimate authority, echoing Machiavelli and Weber.

If we accept an idea of Stinchcombe's, that such formatted possibilities of recourse to the power reserves of others show one's power to be legitimate, then we can see that the law as power-code creates legitimacy structurally (and without it being bound to particular values or even the convictions of the power-subject). Legitimacy is then no more than the formation of contingencies within the sphere of power.

DEFINE: Defines legitimacy as structural contingency formation within power, not as a value-bound moral property.

The communication of power conveys the message that the power-holder would rather not realize his avoidance alternative, but is prepared to do so. Negated intention must be made plausible. Research in social psychology, game theory and the theory of deterrence in international relations in particular, has been concerned with the problem of the power-holder's credibility, which is regarded as a significant precondition for power. If there is no credibility, or insufficient information on this matter, a dangerous testing of power ensues, a trying out of readiness, which often causes irreversible developments towards a realization of the avoidance alternatives.

XREF: Connects to deterrence theory in international relations and Schelling's work on credible commitments, where threats only work if believed.

The power-subject will now no longer speculate about the power-holder's not being ready to use his supplies of power but will speculate on the power-holder's not being informed about reasons for such action. This opens up other 'rules of evasion' which do not possess the tendency to unleash an open power struggle and which are thus more compatible with peace.

DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between two kinds of power-subject speculation: one about the holder's readiness, the other about the holder's knowledge. The latter enables evasions that avoid open struggle.

In all media some of the problems of information-processing are taken out of the process of verbal communication and left to perception. Not only love but power too makes itself visible. Symbols of hierarchy, along with symbolically intended acts of violence, and not least the personal appearance, the presence, of the greatest power-holder in the interaction, all help in this.

There are codes such as love and money which solve the problem of motivation partly by selecting already motivated partners – with correspondingly high demands on information in the selection of partners. The same applies to power, if one first has to look for durable combinations of alternatives. This is difficult because partners ready to subject themselves to power are unlikely to object to presenting themselves as partners who are ready to love, or ready to buy, or interested in truth. Thus, many technically possible power combinations fail due to excessive demands for information. The demand for information decreases in respect of those means of power, such as physical force, which are, to a great degree, independent of motivation structures, or with regard to organized power, which rest on previously and generally established submission and thus also, so far as it goes, (!) operate independently of motive.

XREF: Connects to behavioral economics and information asymmetry literatures on signaling and screening costs in partner selection.

This solution to the motivation problem is backed up by a corresponding solution to the problem of attribution. One needs motives only when action is imputed. In the case of an action motivated by power, the selection, although carried out by both parties, tends to be attributed to the power-holder alone, because the power-subject does not appear to have motives which can be recognized as his own. Admittedly this does not have to be the case. For example, not every exercise of power frees the power-subject from criminal responsibility. A power-code, however, must take account of this tendency to shift attribution and can legalize and formalize it by giving the power-subject, for example, the possibility of being 'officially' compelled and thereby relieving himself of responsibility. In extremely power-specific codes, such as the military, this even occurs without the assistance of the subordinate; the officer takes responsibility for an unclear order.

All communication pre-requires a level of taken-for-granted understanding that cannot be negated. This level, at which negation cannot occur, has to change according to the type of communication process, and its readiness to address its subject-matter. In the older European tradition, the verbal formula of perfection was available for such taken-for-granted understandings. It introduced, for example, the form of political ordering of human life as the 'most glorious' community. The concept of perfection points on the one hand to the possibility of augmentation, and on the other sets a boundary to it. As a form of reality, perfection itself can be increased to the ens perfectissimum (God as the most perfect being), where the relatively imperfect finds at once its reason for existing and the grounds for its own critique. With the help of this logic of perfection, the aspects of a code, preserved from negation, could be formulated in a way which also catered for the use of negations in the codified processes. Participation in perfect truth implied the possibility of error, participation in perfect power, the acceptance of limitations.

DEFINE: Introduces the concept of a 'verbal formula of perfection' as a mechanism that both enables and bounds communication of shared understanding.

On the basis of the foregoing discussion on legitimacy, I differ from much current opinion in seeing the problem of legitimacy neither as one of establishing a sufficient (even a logically valid) justification for the power-code, nor actually accepting it solely on the basis of a mixture of consensus and force. I see it rather as a problem of the structures and processes which make the code possible and control it as it becomes contingent. Justification and acceptance are only aspects (and in scientific terms inadequately formulated aspects) of this general problem of contingency control. Into this abstract formula old problems become integrated, while the emphasis on and search for the formulation of follow-up problems are cancelled. The question of how it is possible to maintain differentiations in the face of high code-contingency comes to the fore.

DEFINE: Reframes legitimacy away from justification/consensus toward contingency-control structures and processes.

That is true, at least, for the situation in which this happens. Nemo ad praecise factum cogi potest (No one can be compelled to do something), goes the old saying, applied to legal judgments. Physical coercion can thus not simply be understood as the 'last resort' on a scale of increasing pressures. Rather it has a much more general meaning in relation to the symbolically generalized power-code in that it mediates the relationship of the symbolic to the organic level and does so without involving other, non-political function systems, such as the economy or the family. In this way it becomes possible to differentiate power which is specifically political – always with the proviso that the power itself does not 'degenerate' into physical coercion.

DEFINE: Clarifies how Luhmann distinguishes physical coercion from political power: coercion mediates symbolic and organic levels, while power proper is symbolic and must not degenerate into coercion. XREF: Connects to Luhmannian systems theory concepts like symbolically generalized media and political differentiation from other functional systems.

As was the case with code problems relating to the communication medium of power, we can profit here too from analyses at the level of a general theory of communication media. No communication medium can consist solely of a series of generalized symbols, such as a list of signs. All those involved in the communication process are subject to common conditions and limits of selectivity on the basis of their physioorganic existence – in other words, on the basis of conditions of compatibility with other levels in the formation of the system.

DEFINE: Clarifies that communication media always operate under shared physioorganic constraints, not just symbolic abstraction.

No communication medium can consist solely of a series of generalized symbols, such as a list of signs. All those involved in the communication process are subject to common conditions and limits of selectivity on the basis of their physioorganic existence – in other words, on the basis of conditions of compatibility with other levels in the formation of the system. Since these conditions are the same for any participant, we can talk of symbiotic conditions and label whatever regulates the relationship between symbolic and symbiotic levels as symbiotic mechanisms. All communication media form symbiotic mechanisms – depending on the degree of differentiation, of generalization, and of specification of their code under varying conditions.

XREF: Luhmann's systems theory — symbiotic mechanisms connect with his notion of interpenetration between psychic and social systems.

Put positively, symbiotic mechanisms offer a sort of security for media-guided processes with which they find themselves matched. This security becomes all the more important, the higher the selectivity of the regulated experience/act on both sides and the more insecurely the selection comes about. If much is feasible, the sooner one has to know what it is that one should be aware of; if anyone could marry anyone else, sexuality would become more important as a basis and proof of love.

There are, it is true, limitations inherent in the organic perceptual apparatus, but they do not apply to the content of perception. One cannot achieve everything by means of physical force but one can make things happen relatively free of preconditions. Of course, this quality cannot be taken for granted, but is in its turn dependent on the symbolic processes, which give it its form, for in the natural lifeworld there is to begin with no pure physical force, no context-free perception, no libido as such seeking a partner. It is a function of the media-code at the outset to give a symbiotic mechanism freedom, so that the fact that it is not anchored to the symbolic level and is independent from specific meaning-structures can be exploited.

DEFINE: Clarifies how media-code functions to free symbiotic mechanisms from dependency on specific meaning-structures.

This occurs by means of banning self-gratification. In the case of love/sexuality this relationship is obvious. Truth, also, cannot rely on the purely subjective evidence of experience – either in the process of perception or in a sort of intuitive apprehension of meaning. And power would hardly be able to fulfil its social ordering functions, so as to transfer selections and get beyond mere force, if anyone could use violence at any time.

If the superiority of physical force over any other possible form of force is to be guaranteed reliably in one geographical territory, it assumes that resources have been amassed and mobilized. At that point this superiority no longer provides ultimate security but requires organization of decisions about its deployment and that this organization is certain.

In addition to this, physical force displays that property of asymmetrical ordering of relative preferences which is essential to the formation of power. It is less unwelcome to the superior than to the inferior. Apart from this, the exercise of physical force forms the culmination of a conflict in which it is impossible to avoid a decision – either one party or the other must win. This results in the formation of a binary orientation-schema which in itself anticipates the outcome of the conflict.

DEFINE: Explains how the asymmetrical ordering of relative preferences (force being less unwelcome to the superior) is essential to power formation, and introduces the concept of a binary orientation-schema.

Neither legitimacy nor physical force arises without the mediation of symbolic processes. The concepts characterize neither a simple opposition nor the dual poles of a single dimension, such that one might say: the more physical force, the less legitimacy, and vice versa. Rather, symbolic interdependencies exist in the sense that regulations of the relationship at the symbiotic level – i.e. at the organic side of social co-existence – have to reckon with the requirements of the relevant communication medium. The interplay of both is necessary for the processing of contingencies, and the preconditions for this combined action can vary as they evolve. Above all they depend on the differentiation of a specifically political power mechanism and on its universal accessibility throughout society.

DEFINE: Clarifies that legitimacy and physical force are not opposites on one scale but interdependent symbolic-symbiotic mechanisms requiring communication-medium compatibility.

Since Husserl1 it has often been noted that the co-existence of people in daily interactions proceeds on the basis of a taken-for-granted certainty about the world (Husserl uses the slightly more abstract term world-certainty) unproblematically or, in any case, unproblematized. Disturbances remain the exception. The foundations of human co-existence and the conditions for its continuance normally do not need to be considered; actions do not need to be justified; motives do not need to be expressly obtained and displayed. Problematizings or applications are never excluded and always remain a possibility, but this non-actualized possibility usually already suffices as a basis for interaction. If no one takes it up, everything is in order.

XREF: Connects to Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Schutz's phenomenological sociology, both building on Husserl's world-certainty concept.

This concept of technique has a much broader sociological foundation than the concept of machine technology. Hence, it is also firstly much more loosely defined, as far as correlations with other variables in the societal structure are concerned. It does not carry the immediate suggestion that the way work is organized, environment control, conditions for production, the state of the economy, and class domination are primary factors in social change, although it does not exclude such factors. It thereby attains a comprehensiveness which is adequate for the societal system as a whole. It can be assumed that more advanced stages in the technicalization of society have a direct bearing on all function subsystems.

DEFINE: Distinguishes 'technique' (broad sociological category) from 'machine technology' (narrower concept).

The technical in the structure of communication media is based on the characteristics found in binary codes; they schematize any number of processes at the start; they regulate the sequences of their operation and they strengthen their selectivity, by forming chains, beyond what individual participants can oversee and be responsible for. Of equal importance is the possibility of symbolizing possibilities in such a way that the selection process can react not just to what is actually there, but also to what is possible and real in its possibility of being something different. Codification and symbolization take the pressure off consciousness and thereby increase its ability to orient towards contingencies.

For a system with an environment varying at random, the orientation around relatively simple rules – and, in social communication, acceptable rules – leads to the construction of increasingly complex structures. Simplicity and chance are relatively modest preconditions for the construction of complexity. For this reason these preconditions of existence do not contain any guarantee whatever that the system will maintain itself, let alone be capable of self-regulating. Problems of maintenance and of continual adaptation loom very large as follow-up problems from technical developments, and thus demand that special sorts of techniques be used on the basis of the level of complexity already achieved.

XREF: Connects to complexity theory, emergence, and Luhmann's social systems theory — resonates with the idea that emergent complexity requires additional maintenance mechanisms.

At one and the same time they are conceived of as ‘deviations’ from the basic phenomena of social life, as ‘normalized improbabilities’, and as structures which always assume that influence normally does not have to be based implicitly or explicitly on power, but can be exercised with ease and practised as determined by the situation, without making it essential and without having much depend on it. Power presupposes that not too many problems which can be solved only by power will arise; in the same way that, within communication regulated by power, it must be assumed that not too many communication problems will turn into code problems.

DEFINE: Distinguishes power from influence by noting power is a fallback that presupposes most communication problems remain solvable without it.

Meaning is generalized to the extent that it can be made independent of differences in each dimension, i.e. independent of when something is experienced, of what is experienced, and of who does the experiencing. Adequate generalization of meaning is a precondition for the relatively context-free and situation-free use of meaningful content and thus for any sort of technicalization. The most important instrument of generalization is language.

DEFINE: Defines generalization of meaning as the stripping of time-, content-, and subject-specificity, with language as its chief instrument.

In the case of temporal generalization, time differences are neutralized – ego accepts the influence because he has already accepted influence previously, because there is a history whose continuation seems obvious. In the case of factual generalization, factor case-related differences are neutralized – ego accepts the influence because he has also accepted influence in different circumstances and because he transfers to someone else the task of taking on the content of the communication. In the case of social generalization, social differences are neutralized – ego accepts influence because others accept it too. In order to be able to label these types of generalization clearly we will call temporally generalized influence authority, circumstance-generalized influence reputation, and socially generalized leadership influence.

DEFINE: Distinguishes authority (temporal), reputation (circumstantial), and leadership (social) as three modes of generalized influence.

Authority is created on the basis of a differentiation of probabilities as a result of previous action. If influential communications have, for whatever reasons, always been successful, there emerge expectations which strengthen this probability, facilitate new attempts, and make rejection more difficult. After a period of untroubled acceptance, rejection causes surprise, disappointment, unforeseeable consequences and thus requires special reasons. And, vice versa, authority does not need to be justified initially. One could say that it is based on tradition, but does not need to invoke tradition.

DEFINE: Explains authority as a probabilistic expectation built from prior successes rather than any intrinsic right or initial justification.

Reputation is based on the assumption that reasons for the correctness of the influenced action can be given. The factual generalization of influence is also that direction of generalization which lies closest to cognitive mechanisms. Thus, even scientific theory could use the concept of reputation to designate a possible substitute for truth.

SEED: This suggests an article angle on how scientific credibility operates as a social proxy for verification, and the epistemic risks when reputation outweighs evidence.

Here too, the basis of the relationship is a possibility – the simple possibility of further inquiries and queries, which, however, is not exercised. This possibility contains an element of indeterminacy – to be more explicit, it lacks the necessity of complete determination – and this factor underpins the act of generalizing. Thus, to the extent that reasons for certain actions are clearly and generally recognized, reputation decreases.

Leadership is based – and here we are referring back to research on group theory – on increasing willingness to follow, as based on the experience that others are also following; in other words, it is based on imitation. Some, then, accept influence because others are doing so and the latter accept influence because the former do so. Where influence over several people is possible and expectable the leader can choose whom to influence and, in addition, he gains options which in turn become an orienting factor for others. The leader becomes independent of concrete conditions of obedience which a given individual could demand of him. The individual relinquishes possibilities which he himself possesses and, should he object, he has to incite the group against the leader.

DEFINE: Frames leadership not as command but as cascading imitation, where followers influence each other rather than merely obeying a directive.

This entails limits not only on generalizing and abstracting influence relations, but, at the same time, on the functional differentiation of social systems. Despite all the interest in the 'principles' of social life, generalizing about motives being available at different points in time cannot be entirely separated from the factual background of the system and its multifarious concrete commitments. With all the conceptual abstraction and highly developed verbal skill it involves, reputation always retains a link with available knowledge. In short, generalizations in the different dimensions of meaning presuppose one another.

However, influence on actions becomes less dependent on these initial conditions of generalization of motive because of the differentiation of a particular communication medium, i.e. power. Power can become independent of particular motivational preconditions to a greater extent than influence in general is able to. … These are all preconditions for social recognition of the contingency of influence – in other words, for the fact that obedient people accept a reduction by others of their potential for action, although this has come about merely through decision.

XREF: Luhmann's systems theory vs. Weber/Machiavelli on power; connects to how institutions stabilize authority beyond individual motivation.

Power alone is in no way a sufficient condition for its self-realization (i.e. as if it would be up to its force to force itself). The power of power cannot be attributed once more to power. Rather it needs fundamental analysis from the point of view of evolution theory and systems theory, if one wishes to explain on what societal-structural conditions the development and institutionalization of more abstract, more effective media-codes depend.

DEFINE: Clarifies that power is not self-sufficient; its realization depends on structural and institutional conditions analyzed through evolution and systems theory.

In order to deduce that other people accept matters for code-specific reasons, one has to be able to know, or at least to suspect, that selections do actually take place.

DEFINE: Clarifies the epistemic precondition for whether someone accepts positions for code-specific reasons vs. other reasons.

It shifts from the temporal dimension into questions of factual accuracy, of success and of social consensus. This problem situation gets labelled the 'tyrant-complex' and lends itself to traditionally handed-down descriptions. This has always been a danger of too much power, but more recently the danger of 'too little power' has also become recognizable.

In the case of crisis techniques, additional problems appear, i.e. a lack of clarity in both conceptual and theoretical contexts. It is best initially to conceive of crises in a purely formal way from a temporal perspective as a phase in the process carrying exceptional dangers and, as a consequence of this, exceptional possibilities. The complexity of the possible is then not attributed simultaneously to the system but is illustrated on the time axis as a sequence of differences – between, on the one hand, normal situations with little power and with remote possibilities, which for the time being are not really possible, and, on the other, crisis situations in which situational specific power and power relating to a particular subject-matter can be activated, and to which temporally limited special conditions of structural compatibility apply. In this way advantages in temporal differentiation can be gained by suspending accepted premises of conduct.

DEFINE: The author defines crises formally on a temporal axis rather than attributing complexity to a system, distinguishing normal and crisis phases by their power dynamics.

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.

Inflation has the effect of exaggerating the risk of generalization with the danger of devaluing the tools available for motivation. On the other hand, deflation has the effect of not exploiting the opportunities for generalization, with the disadvantage that possibilities of transmission remain unused. Accordingly, in the case of power, a practice of communication which worked with empty or only rarely backed-up threats would stimulate inflation, for example the 'criminalization' of areas of conduct in which violations, in fact, cannot be pursued for reasons of penal policy. Similarly in money matters, 'slight' inflation seems to be a possible risk strategy which, however, does have the disadvantage of being anticipated by the persons affected and can be exploited for their own purposes.

Participating in them, whether positively or negatively, is a necessity of existence. Evolutionary changes in such codes thus always affect the fortunate and the unfortunate simultaneously – those who can love and those who get to know through new types of symbols that they cannot love; those who have property and money and those who do not. Code-change can, indeed, to some extent, lead to a new distribution of opportunities, but the 'inner logic' of the code, the non-arbitrary nature of the arrangement of symbols, usually stops innovation from leading to radical redistribution. It can never be that all nonproperty-owners become property-owners, because this would mean that everyone owns everything, in other words everyone would own nothing. The structure of all media-codes makes 'revolutions' impossible.

XREF: Connects to the idea that symbolic/cultural systems have internal constraints analogous to Bourdieu's habitus or structural linguistics — codes limit what change can achieve.

The formation of political power is relevant not only to politics; it changes society as a whole. With the formation of specialist political systems able to base themselves on permanently superior physical force, a certain systemization and specification of purpose – and thus also a more complex dependence on decision-making for the application of power – can be achieved, but not a complete monopolization of power in the hands of the 'state'. This does not just mean that one must reckon with power being exercised against politically legitimized decisions which are put under social pressure, if not quite threatened with violence, because of attempts to influence decisions over power. A further and perhaps greater problem concerns the volume of societal power which arises and remains outside any connection with the political system – primarily and especially power within the family ('despotism' in the strict sense) and the power of the priests, then power in the economy (mainly the recently much discussed power of property-owners) and also, not least, nowadays, power exercised in the education system which is used as a means of allocating status.

XREF: Connects to theories of state power in Lukes, Foucault, and Gramsci on the diffusion of power beyond the state. SEED: Could seed an essay on how modern states still fail to control power in education, family, or economy.

It is not possible within the love code to threaten to withdraw love. The threat already equals that withdrawal and so affords no power. In economic matters, power, i.e. the power of the person who possesses scarce resources, is neutralized by money – one can buy them from him. It is only a question of one's own resources and of calculating rationally how much to offer. In comparison with the redistribution in late primitive societies of scarce goods in the 'larger household' of society, a monetary economy makes it possible to distinguish clearly between positive stimulation and negative sanction, and thus to distinguish between the corresponding forms of influence.

So the problem regarding the structure of society does not in any way lie simply in occasionally overcoming the ruling upper echelons of the political system – societies have usually survived that well, because social power, as a threat to the political system, must of course change itself into political power. The problem lies elsewhere – in not being able to eliminate power from non-political interactions, in limiting the functional specification of other areas of society to purely personal love, rational production and pure exchange, and purely educational work. Hence, the self-assertion of the political system is not the only long-term political problem in relation to sources of power which exist throughout wider society. There is also the problem of keeping the functional specification of different systems as being different.

DEFINE: Distinguishes political power from broader social power, framing social power as a threat only once it converts into political power.

Increasing interdependencies multiply the power sources in society which cannot be politically controlled (which does not automatically mean that manifestations of power might be politically uncontrollable). In cases of high interdependency, withdrawal, slowing down, or even merely unwillingness to co-operate – little readiness to make sacrifices in order to provide contributions for which there may be a need elsewhere – become a major source of power which neither has recourse to physical force nor can be countered by threats of physical force.

XREF: Connects to theories of asymmetric power, network power, and 'weapons of the weak' — where disengagement and non-cooperation outmatch physical force in interdependent systems.

In older types of societal formation, interdependencies are limited and controlled in important ways by means of stratification into families, status and roles. According to the social stratum to which a person belonged, there was for each one a point of view over and above every functional specification to which behavioural rules of a type specific to the stratum could attach themselves. It also contained non-political, interactionally effective power-controls, above all in the higher strata, where the microcosm of a society based on personal acquaintance could be reproduced within a wider society.

The extremely high interdependencies of modern society, however, can no longer be neutralized in this way – either in strata-specific contact systems of face-to-face interactions, or, in particular, on the level of status and roles. Thus it has become possible to reject stratification as a principle also in ideological terms. The question of functional equivalences remains unsolved in that the problem cannot be simply superseded by lessening the need for integration in modern society. This question remains open as far as our special problem of non-politicizable power is concerned. It would appear that at present two main possible solutions compete with one another. Both gain increasing significance with the reduced importance of social stratification in bourgeois society and both already clearly show symptoms of overloading – namely 'juridification' and 'democratization'.

DEFINE: Clarifies juridification and democratization as competing functional equivalents to stratification in modern society.

In the form of law, political power can, as it were, be conserved and kept available for those who themselves neither act politically nor have power of their own available. Thus, a legal contract must above all be conceived of as an instrument for putting unprogrammed political power into the service of non-political (private) purposes. The fatal distinction between private and public law has obscured this connection between all law and politics, although private law in particular was originally ius civilis, in other words, political law.

DEFINE: Clarifies that legal contracts are instruments converting political power for private purposes, and that the private/public law split obscures their shared political origin.

To the extent that social control is mediated by law and guaranteed by remote power-holders, interaction systems can be freed from concretely binding, and thus much more rigid, forms of social control on a face-to-face basis. Thus law makes relatively unconsidered action possible in highly specified functional contexts. Interaction systems may then be assigned more or less to exclusively specific subsystems of society. In the market, things are only bought and sold; there is no longer any place for gossiping, for looking for a love-partner or preparing for the next political election.

At present more attention is being directed to solving the same problem of the difference between society at large and political force by means of a sort of localized politics specific to small systems. Under normatively intended postulates, like democracy, participation or co-determination, all types of organizational systems in all societal functional contexts, be they schools, mines, prisons or parish churches, are being confronted with claims from all and sundry for participation in the exercise of power. Thus the difference in level between societal systems and individual organizations as well as the differentiation between the functional domains of society become undermined ideologically. We are back to the lifeworld universality of the phenomenon of power. Obviously it is impossible to undo the differentiation of the political system or even just to carry on small-scale politics everywhere in the same way as large-scale politics.

QUESTION: Luhmann seems skeptical of participation and co-determination ideals — worth probing whether this is a defense of systems autonomy or a critique of democratic romanticism.

Organization presupposes that the role of membership in the system is contingent, i.e. that a non-member could become a member but also that members could become non-members, in other words, that there is a recruitment pool of possible members and that it is possible for members themselves to leave or be dismissed. This is one area of contingency. The other lies in the rules which constitute the role of the member and the rules which are designed to determine conduct in organizations. These rules too are defined contingently; they are positive in the sense that they are based on decisions and are, through this mode of validity, in regard to origin or their changeability, or by a comparison with systems in the environment, seen as contingent. These two areas of contingency can now support one another and foster one another to the extent that both become prominent and distinctive.

The power-code established across society as a whole, in a variety of ways, points to this possibility of making new power combinations possible, and of restraining them, by means of organization. Centralizing the distribution of power bases and engaging power as a catalyst in the formation of organization brings this possibility into play. At the same time it would be unrealistic to view organizational systems merely as an instrumental apparatus, as the lengthened arm of the power-holder. This is again only a replication of the symbolic self-presentation of the power-code, not an empirically satisfactory power theory.

One does not finance truths but organizations which more or less successfully concern themselves with exploring and ascertaining truths or untruths. Mutatis mutandis, a similar situation results with the conversion of property and money into power.

XREF: This parallels Weberian and Foucauldian analyses of institutional power and the objectification of knowledge production. The mutatis mutandis extension to money becoming power recalls Bourdieu's forms of capital conversion.

Hence, for potential opponents, the possibility arises of exploiting the owner, since his power to liquidate is too great, compared to that which can be exercised within the organization.

In both the power basis is the same, that is, arrangements over contingency, over 'yes' and 'no' in relation to desired roles. This becomes a power basis to the extent that interests, incumbencies or expectations develop, whose removal or disregard can function as an avoidance alternative. Nevertheless the two types of power differ from one another in important respects. Organizational power relates to the membership as a whole, personnel power to the characteristics of a job, which one occupies and desires to occupy.

DEFINE: Distinguishes organizational power (membership-wide) from personnel power (job-specific characteristics).

In order to make one's way up in the system, on the other hand, much more is necessary, and personnel power can be brought to bear on anyone who has such desires.

XREF: This echoes the tension explored in structural analyses of bureaucracies and their internal power dynamics.

This difference is connected with the fact that organizational power is to a much greater degree sensitive to cyclical conditions. In business recessions, the danger of dismissal grows, and with it the readiness to conform to norms and to be excessively obedient. An economy with full employment has the opposite effect. Personnel power remains relatively untouched by such ups and downs, because there is always a shortage of attractive jobs.

Against this, personnel power tends to be weakened if tied to formal rules for the occupation of jobs, to criteria, to job analyses or standardized personnel evaluations. It uses reference to such rules rather as a camouflage, as an excuse or as a possible way of making one person's negative treatment appear as another person's positive treatment.

XREF: Counter-intuitive inversion where formalization reduces rather than increases power — parallels discussions of how written policy constrains rather than empowers managers.

But the question is whether the constellation of alternatives on which power rests will produce so highly refined a sensitivity, so deep a focus of interest.

We are then no longer faced with the case which classical power theory counts on, that is, that power meets with pre-existing countervailing power and stimulates resistance. Rather, in organizations power generates countervailing power.

XREF: Connects to organizational power/resistance dynamics theory and possibly Foucault's view that power produces resistance.

If one does not relate these points to increases in production, as research in organizational sociology does, but rather to increases in power, one can then ask whose power really profits from increasing reciprocities. How do power opportunities between superiors and subordinates change under such conditions, if the complexity of their possible relationships increases? Obviously the ability of the superior to absorb complexity is narrowly limited. Since precisely this is the source of the subordinate's power, one must suppose that each increase in complexity alters the power relationship in favour of the subordinate, with the result that the more complex an organizational system, the less susceptible it is to leadership.

XREF: Relates to power dynamics and organizational sociology; connects to theories of complex systems and distributed power.

Thus 'emancipation' becomes management's last trick, denying the difference between superior and subordinate and thus taking away the subordinate's power basis. Under the pretence of equalizing power, this simply reorganizes the power which the subordinates on the whole already possess.

DEFINE: Contrasts the nominal meaning of emancipation with its strategic function as a power-reorganizing managerial technique.

Our own analysis, tailored more specifically to organizations, has added the view that the conservation of a superior's impotent superiority is a precondition for the subordinate's power. Accordingly, if one must see amounts of power as variable and if increasing power creates countervailing power, the key to the problem must lie in a greater differentiation and specification of power sources and power communications, which would prevent reciprocal power potentials cancelling one another out.

XREF: Echoes Galbraith's notion of countervailing power and general systems theory on power balancing dynamics.

Just as unsatisfactory are suggestions about the mutual increase in influence which have been developed in the context of the 'human relations' movement, namely chains of increasing influence which turn in on themselves, in which alter accepts greater influence from ego because ego accepts greater influence from alter. This may be a perfectly realistic possibility even for organization systems, but it is hardly compatible with reliance on negative sanctions and avoidance alternatives and would be more a case of love than a case of power.

DEFINE: Distinguishes power from reciprocal influence; power relies on sanctions and avoidance, unlike mutual escalation of influence.

An increase in the power of the subordinates will spur them on to test out their power on one another. The superior gains a new function as a moderator in the power struggles of subordinates. He then not only finds himself confronted with differences of opinion and the sensitivities of his subordinates but also with power differentials between them, based on structure or cliques which he cannot get rid of as such and in which he is one factor among others.

XREF: Connects to management theory about delegation, distributed leadership, and how empowering teams creates new coordination burdens rather than eliminating them.

The judgements of experts, however, help bring out the significance of how questions are formulated, and at the same time give the impression that a mainly negatively directed power of defence and obstruction prevails. An overall 'yes' thus results as a sum total of the unwillingness to say 'no'. … Power develops, so to speak, in spite of organization. In this informal system of political influence, overcoming the difficulties which result from the formal structure ranks among the 'political costs' which may – but do not necessarily – prevent an action from taking place. Politics then thrives on this and at the same time suffers from the fact that power has reached the stage of sacrificing technical efficiency.

XREF: Echoes familiar critique of bureaucracy and Chester Barnard's informal organization theory; connects to Weber's iron cage and modern views of organizational politics.

The barriers will become more detectable if one increases the interdependence of decisions in organizations and changes over from conditional programming to goal-directed programming. Power then acts less and less as a mechanism for transferring selections.

XREF: Connects to systems thinking and organizational design theory about decentralized vs. centralized control structures. QUESTION: What does 'transferring selections' operationally mean here? The language is abstract — worth tracing how power concentrates through decision selection vs. goal-setting.

Faced with this power deficiency, the 'human relations' movement can be characterized as a search for other sources and forms of influence. However, one cannot sufficiently compensate for the shortcomings and limited achievements of a highly technical instrument like formal power with forms of communication and interaction which are less technical, more concretely focused, and more context-dependent. It will never be possible to create out of aggregations of influence, arising from intensified interaction, an equivalent for the organizational and societal achievements of technicalized, context-free, applicable and innovatively initiated power.

Rather they result from highly aggregated data. They do not result by way of sanction, which is not even threatened, and in no way do they take a form of avoidance alternative, whereby one holds back from putting into effect, if at all possible. They alter the parameters and decision-making premises for future action within the system as a result of levels of aspiration and actual states of affairs.

(1976) Generalized media and the problem of contingency. In: J. Loubser et al. (eds), Explorations in General Theory in Social Science: Essays in Honour of Talcott Parsons. New York, 507–23.