The Bipolarity of Democracy and Authoritarianism: Value Patterns, Inclusion Roles and Forms of Internal Differentiation of Political Systems

Abstract

The paper begins with the observation that today’s world society exhibits a political regime bipolarity and suggests an interpretation, based on the sociological theories of inclusion and functional differentiation. We (1) distinguish democratic and authoritarian political regimes by identifying the different value patterns underlying collectively binding decision making. Democracy is understood as a political regime based on the ‘autopoiesis’ of its constitutive values, while in authoritarian regimes we observe a ‘heterogenesis’ of values. To this we (2) add the idea that modern states are characterized by the imperative of individual political inclusion. At the same time new patterns arise for the inclusion of collectivities. Concluding (3), we postulate that this approach allows the study of ongoing transformations of differentiation in both types of regimes. In this part, we present an overview of the hierarchy of levels of modern polities and the horizontal differentiation of subsystems and organizations.

Programmatic Crisis and Moralization of the Politics: a Proposal to Define the Bolsonarism from the Experience with the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…As we have seen, it is necessary to move away from the deterministic approach that intends to explain these phenomena from an “original authoritarian sin” that defines our national political trajectory. This deterministic approach induces us to reproduce an etapist view that reduces and idealizes the relationship between democracy and authoritarianism: authoritarian phenomena are seen as “survival of the past in the present,” and modern politics is idealized as if it were exclusively democratic (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019 ). What is good is attributed to the modern present and what is bad is externalized in time, to the past that insists on survival.…”

“…Among these contradictions, the first to be considered is the very coexistence of democracy and autocracy as distinct but equivalent solutions to modern political problems. Our starting point considers modern politics as a global social system (Luhmann 2002 ), divided internally not only into national states but also into various other arenas and actors, and which oscillates bipolarly between democratic and autocratic alternatives of organization and exercise of power (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019 ). The trajectory and structures of national politics are important, but their importance cannot be explained by itself.…”

“…Since politics is a global system, differentiated internally in nation-states and at sub-national levels, we need a multi-level analysis that is able to consider the similarities and differences in the relationship between the levels, the unbridgeable oscillations between the two poles of bipolarity between autocracy and democracy, and the inherently autocratic or democratic institutional enclaves within the regimes classified this way or that. It is not a question of refusing to classify countries as authoritarian or democratic, but of perceiving discontinuities between the different levels of the political system (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019 , p. 821–822, 833). The objective is to observe differences and similarities at the different levels of the political system and in relation to its forms of political inclusion and exclusion, which can happen in different combinations of participation in the individual and collective input of preferences addressed to the political system and in the output of goods, services, and sanctions produced by public power.…”

“…At the subnational levels, it is common for authoritarian regimes, like China, to combine different forms of inclusion and exclusion with the internal hierarchy of state organization and collectively binding decision-making processes. Thus, while the conduct of central government remains inaccessible, local implementation of public policies acquires more openness to the variety of interests and demands of the environment , promoting distinct forms of participation of the population affected by the results ( output ) of government policies (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019 , p. 833). 8…”

Political inclusion in contemporary China

“…especially the works of Michel Foucault, Talcott Parsons, Niklas Luhmann, and Rudolf Stichweh, political inclusion is understood here as semantics and institutional arrangements by which political systems define and create the possibilities and forms of individual and collective membership and political activities accessible to its members. 4 Inclusion is political when it is part of the main function of the political system in society, namely, to hold ready the capacity to take collectively binding decisions for a polity. Inclusion research can then concretely identify inclusion roles at different levels in the political system (e.g.…”