Constitution As The Mechanism Of Structural Coupling-Niklas Luhmann's Thinking Of Sociology Of Constitution

It is difficult for the traditional study of conceptual history to clearly understand the relationship between politics and law,because it separates the relationship between semantics and social structure.To achieve this task requires a super theory which is sufficient to describe the whole society.In view of the current state of the development of social theory,only Luhmann's social system theory may be competent to achieve this goal.Observation is the source of all knowledge.It means to draw a distinction and mark one side of the two.Second-order observation is the observation of observation,it will make the distinction into the paradox,and only by drawing another distinction can the paradox be unfolded.The movement of paradoxificaion and de-paradoxificaion is the dynamic of semantic development of society.Second-order observation would contingentize the observed observer,so makes the world appear to be polycontextual.The development of the open system theory makes the dominant distinction of the general system theory be changed from "whole / part" to "system / environment".The operational basis of observation is self-referential system,which is characterized by the homogeneity,recursiveness and operational closure of the elements.The structure is also the product of the system's autopoiesis and self-organization,whose function is to reduce complexity.The operational closure of self-referential system is the condition of its cognitive openness.They combine together by the re-entry of the distinction "system / environment",which makes the cognition of system be constructive.Structural coupling means the ongoing presupposition of environmental states on the bases of cognitive openness.It immensely increases system's internal complexity and the sensitivity of irritation by excluding lots of possibilities of being irritated by environment.Structural coupling is fully compatible with system's autopoiesis and restrict the direction of the structural development.The social system is a self-referential system with communication as its basic operation.Communication consists of three parts: information,utterance,and understanding,in which the understanding creates the unity of the operation by observing the other two parts.Human being as the semantic integration of the organic system and the psychic system does not belong to society.The only relationship between the society and human being is interpenetration.In the context of system theory,social differentiation is system differentiation.It means that system recursively produce the difference of system andenvironment.Four kinds of form of differentiation has been evaluated,namely segmentary differentiation,center-periphery differentiation,stratified differentiation and functional differentiation.The primary form of differentiation of modern society is functional differentiation.The social subsystem,by virtue of its unique function and code,achieves its operational closure.The self-description of the social system is the construction of the identity of the system within itself,which has the function of guiding individual self-observation.According to the different forms of social differentiation,society's self-description has different characteristics.In the stratified and central-marginalized societies,the identity of the whole society can be represented by the center or the top subsystem.In the functional differentiation society,there is no self-description which can represent the whole society.State is not an object entity independent of communication but the self-description of the political system with which political system refers to its identity.It arises from the differentiation of political system,so only modern state is true state.The semantics of state has experienced the change from absolute state to the state founded on law.Both semantically integrate the legal system and the political system,but the operational difference between the two systems can not be covered by such kind of semantic integration.The state founded on law has two dimensions.In the observation of the legal system,the state founded on law is reflected as the restriction of the arbitrariness of power.In the observation of the political system,the state founded on law means the instrumentalization of politics.In fact,the framework of the state founded on law did not weaken the public power,but rather strengthen it.The state founded on law whose core is constitution is the mechanism of structure coupling between legal and political system.It strengthens the sensitivity of their irritations and highly increases the internal complexity of both systems by limiting the possibility of mutual irritation between them.On this base,a stable corridor of mutual irritation between the legal and political systems can be established.Its principal achievement appears as two aspects.For one thing,legal and political systems achieve the co-evolution of their structure,of which the most significant performance are the positivization of law and the democratization of politics.For another thing,constitution provides the possibility for the legal and political systems to unfold their own paradox by referring each other.The operational condition of the fulfillment of constitution's function of structural coupling is the functional differentiation and operational closure of legal and political systems.However,inthe semantic aspect,the autonomy of both systems must be concealed.