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.