Abstract
Drawing on the systemic concept of contingency that considers the actualized structure of the world as a possibility among others, the article argues that major social crises release systems from reiterative patterns of selectivity that transform contingent options into necessities. As long as crises deconstruct a particular social order and recombine both elements and relations into an alternative form, they are constituent crises that reestablish the contingency of the world. The article briefly reviews the evolutionary role of constituent crises as an expression of the power of contingency in four fields: the collapse and reorganization of ancient societies, the legal revolutions giving rise to modernity, the crises in modern complex social systems, and the transnational and supranational pressures on contemporary constitutional States. It concludes that the modern, multilayered, and polyarchical architecture of world society seems to be more open than earlier periods of social evolution to contingent, self-constituting forms of social order. Yet, operative and normative polyarchy also means more complex crises.
Highlights
Is there an immanent relationship between crises and constitutions? Could the naked contingency of the world when the crisis breaks out be the source out of which order emerges? Does contingency mean radical randomness and arbitrariness of power or does it contain immanent operational limits that exclude possibilities from being selected, thereby contextually and negatively motivating the self-constitutional practice of society?Starting from system-theoretical premises, in this contribution I put forward the argument that social crises play a double role when social systems become captured by patterns of behavioral lock-in that constrain the operational relation between system and contingency: on the one hand, crises decompose social order, while on the other, they recombine elements and relations
I conceive of crisis in a dual role: as an event that releases the system from its self-produced behavioral lock-in, on the one hand, and simultaneously, as a process that reintroduces contingency into social relations and a reflexive guidance of society, on the other
Crises in complex social systems arise when the contingent selectivity of the system engages in a pattern of non-reflexive reiteration that decouples it from the multiple, dynamic connections with its landscape
Summary
Is there an immanent relationship between crises and constitutions? Could the naked contingency of the world when the crisis breaks out be the source out of which order emerges? Does contingency mean radical randomness and arbitrariness of power or does it contain immanent operational limits that exclude possibilities from being selected, thereby contextually and negatively motivating the self-constitutional practice of society?. Starting from system-theoretical premises, in this contribution I put forward the argument that social crises play a double role when social systems become captured by patterns of behavioral lock-in (or patterns of reiterative selectivity) that constrain the operational relation between system and contingency: on the one hand, crises decompose social order (limitative role), while on the other, they recombine elements and relations (constitutive role). I conceive of crisis in a dual role: as an event that releases the system from its self-produced behavioral lock-in (limitative role of crisis aimed at decomposing structural rigidities), on the one hand, and simultaneously, as a process that reintroduces contingency into social relations and a reflexive guidance of society (constitutive role of crisis aimed at reflexively recombining social relations), on the other.
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