Vulnerability of Functional Systems in Societal Transformation: On the Case of Political System

Populist political movements indicate the weakening of formal political processes. Today’s advanced information society provides influential channels to get popularity and political momentum. The theory of functional differentiation predicates the autonomy and unity of each functional system. But, through mass media and the internet, populists can stimulate a societal emotion and mobilize it. We can observe, at least in Japan, a bifurcation of two political processes. On the one hand, there are formal and traditional political processes. Various interest groups support political parties as their represents (or agents) in the political arena which adjust their interests. On the other hand, there is an arena of political communication in which various political groups are contesting to get societal resonances. Now, political system becomes increasingly vulnerable (or sensitive) to opinions in this second arena. This arena of political communication could bring a risk (e.g. of political extremism). But, it could also bring a chance (e.g. to achieve an ambitious consensus on social reform for sustainable society). One way or another, we can describe this situation from the point of view of social systems theory. Niklas Luhmann defined a resonance of social system as a reaction of social system to its environment in accordance with its structure. I will slightly redefine the concept of resonance to describe a societal resonance. That is, a resonance of social system is a reactive reproduction of communication in accordance with its structure (e.g. schema). So, we can regard agendas in the second arena as societal structures which canalize societal resonances (communications). And, the problem is how societal communications affect trajectories of functional systems. The case of politics will be suggestive for this problem.