Unter dem Banner der “Autopoiesis” haben sich Soziologen und Juristen zum Angriff auf den “Staat” versammelt. Gegen den klassischen Staatsbegriff führen sie die Idee einer Gesellschaft ins Feld, die ohne Zentrum und ohne Spitze sich selbst organisiert. Sie berufen sich auf die Theorie selbsterzeugender, “autopoietischer” sozialer Systeme, die Maturana und Luhmann entwickelt und damit die gegenwärtig größte Herausforderung für die Staatstheorie begründet haben. Diese Herausforderung nimmt der Autor an. Die Analyse und Kritik der Theorie autopoietischer Systeme zeigen, daß diese Theorie den Kampf um den “Staat” nicht für sich entscheiden kann. Eine nachmoderne Staatstheorie verlangt, den Begriff des Staates in einer neuen, nachmodernen Staatskonzeption fortzuschreiben.

As the UK’s Labour government prepares a new strategy for sustainable waste management, this article considers the efficacy of the previous Conservative government’s endeavours. Confusion over the relative merits of reclamation, incineration and landfillhas diverted attention from the key priority of minimising waste and increasing recycling. This article considers the muddled aspirations of the Conservative government’s policy; its reliance on indirect policy instruments; the capacity of local authorities to respond to these aspirations; and the suggestibility of the greater waste management system. Sustainability may require more sweeping a reconfiguration of the waste management system than has hitherto been considered.

This contribution offers reflections about Chilean Cybersyn, 50 years ago. In recent years, Cybersyn, has received significant attention. It was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, who conceived it to support the transformation of the Chilean economy from its bureaucratic history to hopefully create a vibrant and modern society, driven by cybernetic tools. These aspects have received much attention in recent times; however, in this contribution, I want to discuss how working in Cybersyn influenced my work after the coup of 1973. Perhaps, for me, its major influence was in the management of complexity, through what I refer here as variety engineering and through the Viable System Model VSM as a paradigm to the management of relationships with implications to enterprises, society and the economy. After the 1973 coup major interest was in technological aspects of Cybersyn such as real-time management and its contribution to decision support and executive information systems. In the late 70s I was personally influenced by information management, but by the early 1980s my work moved towards methodological aspects of how to use the VSM. By 1989 I had created the VIPLAN method (Espejo, 1989). Key questions I attempted to answer were, how to model the complexity of enterprises and their interactions with environmental agents. Later on, in the 1990s and 2000s, the main direction of my work was epistemological, ontological and methodological towards second-order cybernetics and relationships. Only in recent decades the political transformations proposed by Cybersyn have captured the imagination of many commentators. The confluence of social and cultural changes with information technology, data models, artificial intelligence, algorithms and several additional technological developments have challenged the excesses of capitalism, particularly after the banking crisis of 2008–2009. The purpose in this paper is discussing this evolution in the light of those early days in Chile.

Excerpt: Autopoiesis appears to have made a substantial impact on the fields of sociology and socio-legal theory. In both contexts it is seen as a theory inspired by recent developments in biology. As such it is supposed to contain a truly new concept, to imply the mutual closure of various areas of society, and to represent the most advanced variant of general systems theory.

The history of realism is the best argument for constructivism, but that is only the start of constructivism’s troubles! Although constructivism is typically seen as existing within the human sciences, the perils that await constructivism have already been foreshadowed in the history of the natural sciences. After surveying the various instabilities inherent in the realist position, I consider the natural science whose self-understanding has been most consistently constructivist: chemistry. After drawing some lessons from chemistry’s ill-fated attempt at socio-epistemic prominence earlier this century, I then examine recent constructivist efforts to avoid the ‘context-captivity’ that befell chemistry. However, these depend too much on the ‘normal science’ image of inquiry that constructivism is supposedly designed to subvert. Nevertheless, a precedent for this position may be found in rhetoric’s historical retreat from political involvement to the pursuit of ‘interpretation’. Next, I argue that one way of repoliticizing constructivism is to consider alternative social formations within which constructivist projects can be pursued. Surprisingly, this sense of ‘reflexivity’ has been under-represented in the constructivist literature. Social movements appear to be an especially good alternative to, say, disciplinary paradigms, for reasons that I go on to explain. Finally, the entire discussion is epitomized by contrasting ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ constructivisms according to the features of realism that constructivists have felt worthy of simulation.

Der Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit der Konstruktivismus die erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen der politischen Theorie provoziert. Die Analyse konzentriert sich auf den Konstruktionsbegriff und seine unterschiedlichen Verwendungen. Es wird herausgearbeitet, dass aufgrund der Eigenkomplexität der Politischen Theorie verschiedene Konstruktivismen Einfluss ausüben. Durch deren kritische Reflexion lassen sich relevante konstruktivistische Einsichten identifizieren und zu einer konstruktiven Politischen Theorie zusammenfassen.

Excerpt: Politische Diskurse, vor allem, wenn sie sich anschicken metadiskursiv zu werden, sind voll von Begriffen, die sich auf das Problem “Wirklichkeit” beziehen – von der politischen Realität bis zur Realitätsverweigerung angeblich wirklichkeitsfremder politischer Gegner. Auf die knappste Formel gebracht hat Kurt Schumacher, der legendäre Vorsitzende der SPD der ersten Nachkriegsjahre, das politiktypische Realitätskonzept mit dem ihm zugeschriebenen salienten Satz: Politik beginnt mit dem Betrachten der Wirklichkeit. Dieser Blick auf “Realität” ist handlungspraktisch und normativ bestimmt.

The interdisciplinary discourse about limits and possibilities of phrasing ‘real’ statements about reality’ had no effect on political science. Without theoretical and methodological reflection on the description of ‘reality’ the discipline is in danger to become slave to a naive empiricsm. The theory of complementarity and the epistemological ‘linguistic turn’ of many arts and social sciences have left their marks only as marginalia on the discussion of political science. Above all constructivism has discovered the significance of the observer for any observation. But this kind of reflection seems to be unimportant for the most political scientists. This epistemological deficit manifests itself particularly in the area of political steering which is constituted for this discipline. According to the discourse about epistemological contructivism this article outlines a political science based on constructivism and its implications on the problem of observing political steering.