Thesis Eleven

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The Future of Democracy

Niklas Luhmann
Thesis Eleven 1990 26: 46
DOI: 10.1177/072551369002600104

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 The Future of Democracy

Niklas Luhmann

I
The future as such gives cause for concern. That is its meaning and
naturally this applies also to the future of democracy. The more that
is possible in the future, the greater our concern, and this applies espe-
cially to democracy since what is special about democracy is its unusual
keeping open of possibilities of future choice.
Around 1800 the concept of democracy began to be appreciated
precisely on account of its inner impossibility: as the illusory component
of all future constitutions, as concept of the future. This seems to
have become habitualized but the result has not been good for the
concept. We are not satisfied by an illusory concept nor do we have
much optimism to spare for the future.
If we want to judge the future chances of democracy and its fu-
ture dangers, we need to know what it is. It is not sufficient to plug
into the discourse which is currently being conducted under the slogan
of &dquo;postmodernism&dquo; between the avantgardists of immobility and the
postgardists of modernism. It is hardly a surprise to systems theory
that a paradox can have two possibilities of formulation, but it does not
get us very far with the question of democracy. The future of democracy
appears differently according to the concept of democracy we adopt, and
according to these different futures we can already observe problems in
the present which we are convinced others do not see or do not take se-
riously enough. If democracy means reason and freedom, emancipation
from socially conditioned tutelage, hunger and need, political, racist,
sexist and religious oppression, peace and secular happiness of every
kind-then indeed things look bad. And indeed so bad that there is a
high probability that everything we undertake will only make conditions
worse. I leave it to others to talk about these problems.

But even with a narrower concept of democracy limiting decisions

have to be made if we are to get solid earth under our feet. Here, too,

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 47

we need to exclude impossibilities or extreme improbabilities from the

concept.
Democracy is not:
1. Rule of the people over she people. It is not short-circuited self-
reference in the concept of rule. It is therefore not: cancellation of dom-
ination, annulment of power by power. In a theoretical language tied to
domination this is the only possible way of expressing self-reference; and
that is presumably the reason why the word &dquo;democracy&dquo; has survived.
The assumption, however, that the people can rule itself is theoretically
useless.
Democracy is also saot:
2. a principles according to which all decisions must be made participa-
tory; since that would mean: dissolving all decisions into decisions about
decisions. The result would be an endless increase in the burdens of de-
cisions, a gigantic teledemobureaucratization and a final untransparency
of power relations to the advantage of insiders who grasp precisely this
and can see and swim in murky waters.
Instead, I propose that we understand democracy as the splitt ing of
the summit: the splitting of the summit of the differentiated political
system through the distinction between government and opposition. In
system theoretical terms we could also speak of the coding of the polaticol
systems, whereby coding simply means that the system orients itself with
reference to the difference between positive and negative values: the
difference true/false in the case of science, the difference justice/injustice
in the case of the legal system, the difference immanence/transcendence
in the case of the religious system and in the case of the political system
precisely the differences government/opposition.
This coding dissolves a fundamental paradox which emerges in all
systems with organized power differences. If we have within a system-I
am not talking of external relations-superior and inferior power, then
we observe a peculiar impotence of the powerful and on the other side
the power of impotence. The theory of the absolute state already ad-
dressed this problem and saw in it a kind of balance. The differentiation
of government and opposition gave it a form, which de-paradoxized as
it were the problem. The opposition does not have governmental power,
it can thus give expression to the power of impotence.
As long as society as a whole was hierarchically ordered through
the principle of stratifying differentiation such a splitting of the summit

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 48

was unthinkable or was associated with experiences like schism or civil

war, i.e. disorder and calamity. Only when society is so structured
that as society it does not require a summit but is horizontally divided
into functional systems is it possible for politics to operate with a split
summit. In this situation, which is unavoidable today, politics loses
the possibility of representation. Politics cannot pretend to be or to
represent the whole in the whole. It gains, however, the possibility of
its own coding.
This statement can be tested very easily. As soon as politicians ap-
pear with the pretensions of a Moses and seek to order society as a whole
they get into difficulties with democracy. They experience opposition
as an attempt to hinder the execution of their task. They operate, as
Marcel Gauchet has beautifully shown, according to another difference,
that between situation and goal or that between immanence and tran-
scendence. They produce as a result opponents, even enemies internal
to the system and legitimate their position in this internal difference by
reference to the other external difference.
Although everyone speaks of democracy, we lack sufficiently precise
concepts for this coding of politics. As with all codes we must dis-
tinguish between a positive value &dquo;government&dquo; and a negative value

&dquo;opposition&dquo;. Although the one value is mirrored in the other and a re-
lation of reversal exists, the structure is asymmetrical-or if you prefer:
both symmetrical and asymmetrical. Its brilliance is apparent in the
fact that it avoids the simultaneous rule of government and opposition
as with the Roman consuls and yet can give simultaneous expression
to the binary structure. In everything that the government does the
opposition is also present, just as the opposition always orients itself
to the government-to what otherwise? Precisely because both do not
govern, precisely because there is no compulsion to consensus the code
is instructive. It constantly produces system-internal information which
regulates what is attributed to the government and to the opposition.
This is achieved by means of a small temporal difference: the possibil-
ity that governing and oppositional parties change places at the next
election.
It is no exaggeration to consider this splitting of the summit, this
coding of the political system as a highly improbable evolutionary achieve-
ment. Political power was originally coded otherwise through the dis-
tinction between superior and inferior power or for example, as in the

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 49

theories of the state in the second half of the 18th century through the
distinction between (superior) public and (inferior) private power. The
unambiguity of this power difference was the motor and goal of the
differentiation of an autonomous political system. This was not aban-
doned but relativized through a kind of second coding, through the
super-coding of superior power into a positively and a negatively valued
position. And at the same time the ruling power gives up the authority
of the correct opinion. Instead it is replaced by &dquo;public opinion&dquo;, which
capriciously favours now the government and now the opposition. The
Highest Power becomes unstable. It would be self-deception to attribute
the Highest Power now to public opinion as the secret sovereign or even
to the people. The structural gain lies rather in instability as such and
the resultant sensibility of the system.
This structural achievement correlates in turn with the differentia-
tion of the political system as one of the many functional systems of
society. This differentiation signifies that the political system must op-
erate within, not above a highly complex social environment, which is
constantly changing through the autonomous dynamics of functional
systems. The economy fluctuates; science invents atom bombs, contra-
ceptive pills, chemical changes of all kinds; schools no longer produce
the trained people the military needs. In short: turbulent times for
politics, which thus must operate as a closed system, that is, as I like
to put it, as an autopoietic system which must code and programme
itself for contingency. The resulting structural invention has acquired
the name democracy out of historical-chance reasons.

n
Of course there are other concepts, other theories, other possibilities
for judging the situation. But if things are as I have indicated: what
then is the future of democracy? Or more exactly: what is the present
of this future and what can be recognized in the political reality of
today as a future problem and as a source of danger for this peculiar-
improbable structure? If the whole is highly improbable, much would
suggest that it cannot be maintained but will degenerate in the direction
of the so-called peoples democracies. If the code is to be maintained,
it certainly requires special efforts and above all-in my opinion as a
theoretical optimist-an exact, that is restricting description. With
such a description one can at least create awareness for areas in which
functional deficits can already be observed. I choose the following three

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 50

points without aiming for completeness.

1) The code, which provides that everything that can be made polit-
ically relevant serves either the government or the opposition, appears
to ensure a high degree of openness for events and information. It also
seems to function like a kind of inbuilt permanent stimulus for the search
for themes and for innovation. On the other hand while this guarantees
spontaneity, other structures arise from this basis which restrict further
possibilities. Expectations and habits become fixed. Everything which
comes later must adapt to the structures or seek to alter the structures
in a specific respect through measures which adapt to the structures or
seek to alter them in a specific respect etc. until imagination, resources,
willingness to participate are exhausted.
This self-incurred loss of spontaneity is a very general developmen-
tal process of autopoietic systems. The political system is no exception.
Even alternative groups and green parties find themselves exposed not
only to the pregiven order, the compulsion to adapt but also to this pro-
cess of 1©ss of spontaneity. With the passage of time their light too grows
dim. In reaction attempts to rechaotise the system can be undertaken.
A good example here is offered by art with its almost simultaneous and
hence speedy process of consignment to the museum and rechaotization.
In politics this can only go as fast as public opinion allows. Even where
it is successful, the alternation of loss of spontaneity and rechaotiza-
tion is an autonomous dynamic process of the political system without
inherent guarantee that in this process ampartant socially-structurally
given themes are adequatel’y discussed. The political system reacts pri-
marily to itself, also and especially in the case of binary coding, and
only in second line to what it can understand about the environment
from self-produced information.

2) In my second point I want to relate this problem more exactly to

the structural characteristics of democratic parties. They accomplished
what was still an open question for the 19th century: the preservation
of the liquidity of the code by means of a firm party structure, which
allows political organizations to survive the change from government to
opposition or from opposition to government in the form of political
parties. So far so good. Another problem, however, was made all the
more difficult: how to utilize the code-difference for deciding important

political questions.
Democracy is normally understood to mean that the choice of a

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 51

certain political party or coalition involves the decision for a political

programme which differs from the programme of other parties. This

presupposes corresponding binary oppositional party programming-
a

e.g. conservative/progressive or, since that does not work any more,
restrictive/expansive welfare state policies or, if the economy does not
permit this, then ecological versus economic preferences. Only in this
way can possible directions of the political course be put to choice. The
parties, however, seem afraid of the risks involved. They offer their
programmes like the water of Contrexville: good for kidneys, blood,
liver, circulation, lungs and everything else. And it tastes like that.
Hardness or even the willingness to say what cannot be done do not
appear on the level of the programmes but only in the form of persons
as a kind of accident in the party-internal selection of leaders.

3) As though it were only a question of for this weak-

compensating
ness, moral controversy is staged in place of policy controversy. There
appears to, be a political law here: when money as a means of politics

grows scarce, morality as a substitute increases. Politicians today typ-

ically adopt the line that it is a question of teaching the people who is
to be respected and who not-respect or disrespect as a moral sanction
applied to the person or the party as a whole. And yet they pretend this
is not the case. The result is the public impression that positions on
practical questions are chosen with regard to moral confrontation, which
poses in turn questions about the education and style of behaviour of
leading politicians. And even when this takes a mild form the problem
still remains. &dquo;Preserve decency&dquo;, demands Johannes Rau in emphati-
cally personal fashion in giant advertisements in the daily press, in order
not to say directly but to suggest that his political opponents are not
decent. &dquo;Preserve distance&dquo; has to be the answer-distance from this
kind of politics dipped in morality.
Of course I know that hard
practical work is performed in commit-
tees. I also know that another style of political behaviour is possible
between government and opposition. Above all I am not after an ethical
solution to the problem of morality-such as for instance the setting up
of a commission to work out the appropriate guidelines. My point is
rather that political action in a democracy must take place on the level
of a higher amomlity.
Historically speaking, what is involved here is a bastard child of rai-
son d’etat and morality. The doctrine of reason of state was developed

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 52

on the basis of medieval natural law and then in political theory. Its
problem was a typical problem of paradox: the necessity of legally jus-
tifying infringements of the law in a higher interest-first of all that of
the church, then of the princes. After much dispute, above all in the
literature of the Counter-Reformation, this problem was solved hierar-
chically by tying it to the assumption of an inescapable arbitrariness at
the summit of every hierarchy. This &dquo;sovereign&dquo; distance from morality
cannot be taken over by democracy, by a system with a split summit.
Instead democracy needs another style of higher amorality, that is, the
renunciation of the moralizing of political opponents. The scheme gov-
ernment/opposition should not be burdened either by government or
opposition with a moral scheme on the lines that we alone are good and
worthy of respect, the other side, however, is bad and to be repudiated.
For this would mean that the very possibility of a change of govern-
ment and opposition is called into question; and that means calling into
question the rules of democracy. A good example here is the enemy of
communists, McCarthy: the moment that he accused the Democratic
Party of communist sympathies and infiltration his career was finished.
In a democracy the political opponent cannot be treated as unelectable.
However, this is what happens when the political schema is made con-
gruent with the moral schema.

III
It is time to sum up. If you admire democracy and regard it as an idea,
you have the problem, as is always the case with ideas, of explaining why
it does not work. Instead I regard democracy as an achievement with
many presuppositions, as evolutionarily improbable but real political
achievement. The immediate consequence is that we should not begin
with a criticism of situations and conditions but by being amazed that it
actually functions with then the question: how much longer? If we take
this as our starting point theory becomes an instrument of observation
of a specific kind. It is then a question of finding out where and in what
respects dangers can now be observed. It is as easy as it is irresponsible
to set up ideals, which the existing conditions cannot satisfy, and then
to lament the unfulfilled promises of the bourgeois revolution. I do not
see in this attitude theory, let alone critical theory. If we start instead
from the improbability of what functions as good as normally, it is then
possible to recognize more clearly and above all more exactly where the
system operates in an inconsequential and self-endangering manner in

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 53

relation to its own structural requirements.

If this starting point, this kind of posing the question is accepted,
it is still possible to propose, hold to be correct, test and reject very
different theories of the political system. The concept I am trying to
indicate here states that a determination of the function of politics-for
instance the production of collectively binding decisions-is indispens-
able but not sufficient. Functional systems are also defined by binary
codes. And if you are prepared to follow my argument and see in the
schema government/opposition the code of politics, then certain con-
cerned questions or also critical observations of contemporary politics
follow from this. I want to stress above all two aspects again.
1. Is the autonomous dynamic of politics too rigidly, too centralis-
tically oriented through the code government/opposition to allow suf-
ficient possibilities of relating controversial social themes-from gene
technology to welfare costs, from external relations and armament to
currency policy-to the code itself, thereby making them the subject of
choice?
2. And if finally everything revolves around the question, who rules
and who opposes, can we expect or even presume that political commu-
nication will be conducted with moral abstinence especially if at the
same time we have to do without a socialization and education specific
to a social stratum and thus without a common behavioural culture for
politicians?
It may be that thesequestions will appear relatively unimportant in
comparison with the great practical issues of social political ambition.
But if the concretely addressed problems of structural importance to
democracy already cause considerable difficulties, how are we going to
be able to imagine that democracy can bring about more equality and
more freedom, more subjective self-realization and more peace, better

ecological balancing and more just distribution?

Translated by David Roberts

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