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.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 771