ICT and systemic time squeeze: The uncoordinated temporalities of globalization

Abstract

The recent economic crisis (2008–2011) is coupled with a political crisis as well. This is due to a shift of the financial risk to political risk; the markets seem to press the democratic governments to risk their own social capital so that the former reduce the investment risk. The ability of the markets to achieve such a goal is realized by the global dependence on information and communication technology (ICT) networks that squeeze the time of interactions between the markets and the governments, thus causing a profound problem in the operations of democracies. This paper inspects those phenomena as manifestations of globalization and tries to examine certain solutions to those problems, from a systems theoretical perspective.

Keywords

globalization political system

Introduction (and some basic concepts)

The excessive proliferation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) networks has several social consequences, which are usually identified as ‘drastic social changes’, that is changes in the patterns that continuously reconstitute social systems. A very common issue presented in the relevant literature has been ‘de-spatialization’ (cf. Mitchell, 2000), a state of affairs which nowadays seems obvious, and signifies changes in the collective conception of proximity (Sheuerman, 2009: 306); what is considered proximate, is whatever is connected to an ICT network and consequently to the Internet: complex interactions of high importance (such as financial transactions), are now possible and effortless. Social systems depend heavily on the premise of reliable, efficient and expanding ICT networks as a sine qua non for their own continuation and systemic reconstruction. Therefore, ICT ‘has become the nervous system’ (Hope, 2009: 66) of globalization.

But besides the facilitation of communicative actions within remote systems – something that usually stands out as the main advantage of ICT applications, there is another characteristic that seems to have more profound social consequences: namely, time squeeze. The – so-called – ‘real time communication’, whilst being an important and desirable condition – in fact a prerequisite – for certain social systems (e.g. enterprises, banks, investors, trade stockers/brokers etc.), eventually poses a problem (Rosa, 2009) to other systems (i.e. governments, international institutions, local communities, economies), that are characterized by their pertinent internal systemic recovery times (Ashby Ross, 1957).

In this paper, we try to investigate the discrepancies emerging from that situation from a systems theoretic perspective, and consequently examine certain aspects of the Greek economic crisis in the period 2010–2011, together with the reactions of the other euro-zone members as a manifestation of the problem of different temporalities among interacting social systems and their environments.

At this point we will briefly introduce, some preliminary theoretical notions on the concepts of autopoiesis and the political system, from a systems theoretical point of view. Contemporary systems theory, as articulated by Niklas Luhmann is heavily based on the notion of autopoiesis, a term originally coined by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela who defined ‘the autopoietic machine’ (or the autopoietic system) as

… a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network. (Maturana and Varela, 1980: 78–79, original emphasis)

In brief, an autopoietic machine is a system that recreates itself by its own means, that is, a system closed with respect to information processing¹ which is strictly internal and circular: the autopoietic system circularly reconstitutes itself in time as a distinctive unity. In the field of sociology, Niklas Luhmann clearly separated psychic systems (which are not a subject for sociology) from social systems, pointing out that social systems are constituted from communicative actions rather than psychic systems (Luhmann, 1986). According to Luhmann, psychic systems are the environment of social systems and vice versa: the psychic system and the social system function in interdependency but are clearly autonomous in their own right and operate as autopoietic systems with internal meaning-constructing processes. The communicative actions are the constitutive parts of the social systems and they comply with all of the characteristics of the biological autopoietic machines, since they are catalysed (i.e. a repetitive communicative action loses its value as information) and replaced by new ones, and this circular process continuously recreates the social system within which it takes place. Put more simply, distinct social systems have their distinctive communicative codes (i.e. languages, jargons, cultures, gestures, etc.).

Accordingly, social systems have also their pertinent ‘binary codes’ (Luhmann, 1995). Luhmann, based on the original work presented by George Spencer-Brown (2008), suggests we conceive of the autopoietic systems as forms, that is, as unities which are based on a binary difference (inside-the-system/outside-the-system) and evaluate each and every event they perceive based on this distinction. In this paper, the term ‘political system’ is used excessively, so we will present here this concept as an example of that binary function. When we refer to the political system – following in the Luhmannian vein – we mean a closed autopoietic system, operating on two distinctions: a constitutive one, namely government/opposition (Luhmann, 1990b: 232), and a more typical and general one, that is system/environment (Luhmann, 1995). The distinction government/opposition represents the unity of the system, a coherent structure with two sides, both of which are functional parts of the political system, and (in democracy) are in a state of co-existence and interdependence: none of them can claim a legitimate existence without the other one. The government and the opposition present (and represent) different approaches, and that difference is what guarantees the continuation of the political system; on the other hand (i.e. the distinction system/environment) they are absolutely coordinated in the sense that they deal only with the political matters, leaving other matters to other specialized systems. For instance, the problems of – say – the scientific system, are tackled by that system itself – the political system simply does not have the tools (i.e. the language and the methods) to resolve scientific problems (or religious problems, or any other system-specific problems for that matter): the political system, deals with political problems and with political means; it maintains unconditional authority over its own internal functions and structures, but concurrently it is bounded with respect to other autopoietic systems.

So, the problem we examine here is the situation the political system finds itself in, when it lacks the time needed to reconstruct itself in the face of challenges presented by the markets, especially whilst the latter – on the whole – are not self-referential. The paper is organized in seven parts, as follows. The first part presents some basic thoughts on the problem of time in the abstract, whereas the second part outlines the importance of time for the social systems and for the ICT industry. The third section refers to the functions the modern democracy uses in order to assure a risk-free operation of the political system. The fourth part introduces the concept of ‘the markets’ as a special kind of system in correlation with the problem of time and the democratic processes, and the fifth part examines the phenomena that took place in Greece in the period 2010–2011 in terms of a growing risk for the Greek political system due to the lack of time it had for consultation. The following section investigates the measures the political systems in Europe and the USA try to take in order to compensate for the problems emerging from their coupling to the markets, and finally the concluding part recapitulates the problems analysed and presents – albeit abstractly – some general ideas about the potential of the political system.

Time and temporalization

The very notion of time is quite peculiar (Quine, 1960: 170). Ontologically speaking, one cannot come up with a rigorous, accurate and coherent definition of time, unless one is ready to include within that definition references that already include the notion of time, thus ending up with a self referential (and therefore circular) definition. Put more simply, in order to define time we have to presuppose it, so a logical trap is emerging. The way to practically refute that problem and the logical contradictions it entails lies in the concept of identity; when Heraclitus says ‘you cannot enter the same river twice’, he does exactly that: ‘the same river’ denotes identity, and therefore implicitly connects two different temporal observations through the introduction of the sameness of the object: the identity of the river then transcends time, and ‘the same’ emerges as a unique object (a unity) unbounded from temporality. Therefore, an object exists in a continuum (as it were) as long as it is observable – and ‘it is’, always right here and now: ostension takes place only at the moment of observation, and this very moment never passes away.

Be that as it may, time offers the ground upon which becoming is possible. Things are changing, some remain ‘identical’ and some do not, and the concept of time regulates the experience of the observer: a thing was (a reminiscence of the observer) in a state, it is here-and-now perhaps in a different manifestation, and certain predictions about its future may be feasible. From an epistemic point of view we already have in hand many variables, namely: observers, objects, the functions of observation and identification and processes that connect them together; in a few words, what we have are networks of observations of an ever changing ‘out there’ into which certain variables remain somewhat identical.

Evidently though, things are a bit more complicated: if Heraclitus identifies the river as a constant how can ‘twice’ be impossible? Quine (1980: 70) notes that the river changes and so ‘twice’ implies that very change. We reckon that, the observer changes as well - because after the first time he enters the river, he has a reminiscence of his experience, and this modifies his perception thereafter. So it is the observer that enfolds the object with identity, and therefore stabilizes his experience (von Foerster, 2003: 261–271).

So for our inquiry, we will use the notion of time (the way it is outlined hereto) as essential for the regulation of the experience. Following the core of contemporary systems theory (i.e. second-order systems theory), we deal with our subject under the following logic. (1) There are systems that we (as observers) can categorize as self-referential or not (self-referential). When we refer to self-referential systems, we mean systems that are continuously constructing descriptions of themselves as different from anything else. (2) Observation is possible only for an observing system. Observing systems function through the operation of distinction. Their most important distinction is the distinction that cuts them off their environment: a basal distinction known in the scientific literature as [I/Thou], or [Self/Other] and in systems theory, in the general form [System/Environment]. Thus, observing systems transcend time² through the incessant reconstruction of their identity. (3) Observing systems are self-referential. (4) Self-reference is a communicative prerequisite: according to Gregory Bateson (2000: 205) ‘ … the term “ego function” … is precisely the process of discriminating communicational modes either within the self or between the self and the others’. So conceiving of communication as the exchange of signals between a system and its environment, we assume that the ability to communicate reveals the self-referential operation of the system. Clarke and Hansen (2009: 14) offer a similar representation of the basic premises of the second-order systems theory, but the one we present here, seems to us to reflect more accurately the main guidelines adopted by Luhmann (1995), Bateson (2000), von Foerster (2003) and Maturana (1970, 2005). Furthermore, those principles are abstract and general enough, so to form a proto-logic and therefore are compliant with the basal approach of George Spencer-Brown (2008); that is, a very general theoretical framework that can include every phenomenon that could be of interest (cf. also Durkheim, 1994). The reference to phenomena already implies the function of observation and this includes self-observation which of course is inseparable from self-reference. Before we get into our analysis, we need to clarify, albeit briefly,³ one critical assumption, namely that the experience needs to be regulated. Into the core of our approach lies Niklas Luhmann’s (1995, 2002) concept of ‘the event’. That is, a change in a state of affairs that is noticed by an observing system and triggers a structural change within that system itself. We emphasize here that the structural change is exclusively guided by the system’s own prior experience and its own expectations and it is not defined by the environment. The environment is a pool of events – so to speak – for the observing system, but the meaning attributed to the events is constructed by the autopoietic system itself. Those events are indispensable for the system since they are its only indicators as to what it should do to assure its continuity within an ever-changing environment; that is, to successfully reconstruct new descriptions of itself as being-in-the-world. This of course does not mean that any event has a constructive value; some events could attract observing systems to destruction. Nevertheless, self-referential systems consume time in order to compensate (through structural change) for those events, as we will analyse in the following parts of this paper. From now on, whenever we refer to social systems or observing systems such as companies, governments, institutions, etc. we mean self-referential autopoietic systems in the sense suggested by Luhmann (1986).

Social systems and time

Social systems are forced towards selection; that is, they try to counterbalance complexity through a twofold selective process. First, they select what is pertinent to them, through abstraction. Not everything that takes place outside their boundaries counts as information. Certain events become information, enfolded with meaning by the observing system, and the rest are mere noise (if detected at all). It is not the environment that forces the system to select specific events, but the system’s own inability to conceive of ‘everything’, and consequently to ‘adapt’ to everything. So the system deals with its environment selectively, effectively reducing the complexity to a level it can handle. This is to say that the system narrows its horizon of observations in an effort to trivialize its own lifeworld, that is, to make its environment predictable.

Needless to say, systems living in an ever changing environment, fail to achieve a final stage of predictability – but this doesn’t mean they stop trying. This ongoing endeavour is what triggers systems’ self-recreation (i.e. autopoiesis) through the reconstruction of its internal communication network on the basis of its own systemic identity (which also undergoes a cycle of reconstruction). This is to say that the system continuously constructs selective descriptions of its environment, and stabilizes structures within its own boundaries as processes that will counteract potential threats to the system’s most important function: its self-description. So by means of internal functional differentiation, the system becomes more and more complex, constantly exchanging its being for an internal process of perpetual becoming, which eventually (that process) becomes what the system is. This is the second selection a system makes, namely: whatever its next state is going to be, that is what the system selects to become. Again, that state is correlated to the environment, but not steered by that: the system reconstructs itself according to its own interpretations of what it considers to be its environment, and additionally according to its own systemic memory and its own expectations (Figure 1). And this substantiates – so to speak - the notion of time: memory serves as the past, and the expectations (realized as goals) represent the attainment of a future state, a new arrangement between itself and its environment.

Figure 1.

Systems and time – the horizontal arrows denote that memory (past) and goals (future) are reconstructed at the present, whereas the system is coupled with its environment.

Therefore the system temporalizes its experience, and this is reflected upon its own structure; concurrently, based on that same structure the system designs its own future: and so, re-enacting methods from its past, and conceiving of its own state as subject to change in the future, the system takes action right here and now, proceeding to the next ‘next’, retriggering its own feedback processes (and of course, causing the same to the systems that constitute its environment). But as Niklas Luhmann (1995: 45) points out, systems function that way ‘ … if enough time is at their disposal to do so … ’ and Stafford Beer (1973: 4) argues that ‘ … Any homeostat takes a finite time to re-establish its new stable point’ (emphasis added). This is described as ‘the relaxation time of the system’. To be sure, Beer following Ross Ashby (1957) conceives of a homeostat as a compound machine that rests upon a dynamic equilibrium. And the ‘stable point’ is the ‘point’ where the system is able to reconstruct a new description of itself (i.e. re-establish its dynamic identity).

All these ideas introduce the notion of the systemic recovery time: social and psychic systems are not automata. This is to say that they are not machines with predesigned solutions, like say, a pre-specified surplus of functional states at their disposal that they can presumably enact at will and faultlessly, so to serve as ‘of-the-shelf’ solutions to the problems they face. On the contrary, living systems rely on problem-solving processes that either enact their internal subsystems, or try to invent solutions ad hoc if the problems are new. Either case though, needs time. It is deduced that systems reconstruct their own identity at the expense of time (among other things such as energy for instance). Clearly then, social systems consume time so as to extend themselves in time.

Consequently, social systems of high complexity rely on coordination. And coordination is also a time regulating process: it is of no surprise thus, that national states try to impose ‘time-zones’ onto their territory. Their goal is coordination, a control over time, as a sine qua non before any other expectation can be attained. And this coordination, when it comes to democratic regimes is not vague:

Liberal democracy … means the rule of law, the rule of formal rules, the pre-eminence and pervasiveness, the mythology and sacredness of formal rules: rules of discussion, voting rules, decision-making rules … and last but not least, time rules, that is, rules that define the temporal structures or the timetables of democratic politics, its time budgets, its points of initiation and termination, its pace, its sequences, and its cycles. (Schedler and Santiso, 1998: 8)

But evidently (due to the rate of change): ‘ … Today it is typical of social institutions that the mean interval between shocks is shorter than the relaxation time: the institutions were originally designed to accept a much longer interval between shocks’ (Beer, 1973: 5, emphasis added). Interestingly enough, Beer’s argument appeared in 1973, long before the emergence of the Internet, mobile computing, abundance of information, and the worldwide spread of multiple manifestations of real-time transactions. Beer claims that democratic regimes have a long relaxation time: this longevity of institutional time, is a typical constitutive characteristic of democracy as opposed to authoritarian regimes that can often afford the lack of consultation and react almost instantaneously and arbitrarily with respect to the social systems they govern (Schedler and Santiso, 1998: 8; Linz, 1998: 20–21). Democracies are time-bonded and time-bounded (for governments are pro tempore or else there’s no democracy): they function through time intervals, and they manage time expending time. They also use time to continuously reconstruct descriptions of their encompassing social systems (as realizations and expectations) and act accordingly.

As it should be expected then, with the appearance of the Internet and the high-speed information highways, the situation gets more complex. This is because speed, or more accurately, the compression of time, is a vital part of ICT systems right from the moment of the appearance of the first computer. This comes as no surprise, since the term ‘algorithm’ means a series of finite steps that lead deterministically to a solution in a finite amount of time. As Luciano Floridi (1999: 47) puts it, ‘ … the computational power of computers depends entirely on the design of their instructions and the physical speed at which they can execute them. The amount of time-space resources available and the quality of the algorithms are therefore crucial’.

According to the computer scientists, every job performed by a computer is a job that could be carried out by a human with a pencil and a piece of paper, assuming that the human would have enough time at his disposal; and it is obvious it should be this way (i.e. a definable problem), otherwise it would be impossible to analyse a problem into the finite steps of an executable code. The advantage of the computer then, compared to a person, lies heavily on speed. So, right from the beginning, time is a critical issue for computational tasks and this also includes the relevant hardware, for example faster processors, faster buses, memory chips, graphic cards, quicker disk access (i.e. quicker data transfer) and so on. Even the notion of ‘bandwidth’ – so common in technological communication networks – is dependent on time: the ‘bandwidth’ is the amount of bits (binary digits) that can be transmitted over a physical media in a certain fraction of time.

Needless to say, services like VoIP (Voice over IP, aka Internet Telephony), live video streaming, online conferences, etc. underline the importance of continuously upgrading the speed of the technological networks. One remembers here the famous motto of the Olympic Games: ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (Faster, Higher, Stronger) as the networks become faster, the processing power increases (stronger) and the expectations of the society get higher and they are fed back to the computer industry as new challenges, triggering the cycle anew. So, quite aptly Robert Hassan notes:

Computers and flexible production systems rapidly spread across almost all industries, providing a boom for the computer industries themselves which, spurred by intense competition within that industry, drove the information technology revolution faster still. The over-riding logic quickly became a race to develop the fastest computers, thereby reducing the time-gauge of industries and societies to nanoseconds (one billionth of a second) … The principal ‘problem’ the revolution seeks to solve … is how to store, generate and process information at faster and faster speeds. (Hassan, 2003: 14)

This technological framework is coupled – as has always been the case in the history of humanity – with the social processes, intensifying them through an accelerating cycle of interdependence; or, put in systemic terms, a structural coupling between society and technology, but with the unique characteristic of an almost instantaneous mutual feedback. Castells (2001:73) maintains that the financial markets, while becoming integrated and more powerful throughout the globe, offer the necessary capital for the financing of the ICT industry. This happens due to the relation of ICTs with the concept of time, as already analysed, and of course due to the nature of capitalism:

… time leads over competitors in the introduction of new technologies or products that are a key element of market competition because they allow for crucial extra profits before competitors catch up. Finally, the accelerated reproduction of invested capital is crucial with respect to what Marx called the ‘moral consumption’ of technology and to the credit system. As a consequence, the circle of production, distribution, and consumption constantly accelerates. (Rosa, 2009: 89)

Therefore it goes without saying that the ideal time lapse for the technologically mediated processes tends to zero: proximity changes gradually its meaning and signifies the access to high-speed ICT networks. In other words, the ability to act (or react) quickly becomes a critical factor for successful selections of the self-referential systems. Those selections could refer to actions, reactions, ‘adaptations’, responses, notions which can collectively be reduced to the function of system’s self-reconstruction (i.e. autopoiesis) in front of the challenges presented by its environment.

Risk management in the representative democracy

But then, where does this situation leave democracy? It is very useful for our discussion, to examine at this point the problem of time squeeze in terms of risk management. Following Niklas Luhmann (2008: 22), we would like to introduce the distinction risk/danger in correlation to the distinction system/environment. Seen in this context, risk is attributed to the decisions of the system whereas danger lies in the incommensurable complexity of its environment: the risk reflects the prior experience of a system which – through trial-and-error – realizes that not every danger can be avoided. As Luhmann (2008: 101) puts it:

[T]he concept of risk is, however, clearly distinguished from the concept of danger, that is to say, from the case where future losses are seen not at all as the consequences of a decision that has been made, but are attributed to an external factor [i.e. the system’s environment].

But inescapably, every selection of the self-referential system entails a risk; the system might not get where it is trying to go due to an incorrect selection, the wrongness of which can be proved only by its activation. In a nutshell, any selection goes hand in hand with risk, and this of course includes the selection of no selection (the autopoiesis halts and the system collapses). In other words, the self-referential system is forced to select, and thus its own existence is exposed to a continuous risk which is a result of its own operations.

Needless to say, specific social systems have worked out certain solutions for the problem of risk management (or else they would cease to exist). In our case, the political system has reached a solution of massive risk distribution (i.e. democracy). Through the process of open elections, the risk is distributed to the citizens who – allegedly – vote for the political programme they favour. Those political party programmes are presented as descriptions of the present of the encompassing societal system (i.e. answers to ‘what is the case?’) and as programmes for actions for the attainment of a certain future. In this way, the description a political party constructs, becomes (again: allegedly) a collective description; as if society as a whole described itself within itself. This process allows the political institutions to distribute the risk burden to their constituencies and safeguard their roles as executives rather than decision-makers. For this kind of distribution of risk, consultancy – and therefore time – is crucial.

Market, social systems and uncoordinated temporalities

We move forward now, to examine the concept of ‘markets’ in terms of systems theory.

The term ‘market’ is very common nowadays; usually it appears interchangeably with the terms ‘market economy’, or even just ‘economy’. Following Niklas Luhmann (1995, 2008) and Alex Viskovatoff (2004) we reckon the market(s) to be the ‘internal environment’ of the economy; that is, the market is a construction by means of which the economic actors test their selections. Needless to say, every corporation, enterprise or firm, is a self-referential system. It creates descriptions of itself and tries to rearrange its structural coupling with its environment: this is to say that every economic actor seeks to create an optimal lifeworld for itself and with that criterion running through a feedback loop, takes every next step, using the market as a test bed of its selections. But here comes the question: is the market – as a whole – a system?

Checking the characteristics of the market against one of the early definitions of the concept of the system, it seems that the market is a system indeed: it is a network of interdependent variables (von Bertalanffy, 1968); every change in one of the variables, is reflected to the others (a sine qua non of systemic quality) and therefore, the market is a system.

But, on the other hand the market does not construct descriptions of the market: hence, the market is not a self-referential system. The market does not ask ‘what is the case’ (for it doesn’t have a steering subsystem).⁴ As Norbert Wiener puts it:

There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end in a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. … Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple - minded theory. The market is a game, which has indeed received a simulacrum in the family game of Monopoly. It is thus strictly subject to the general theory of games, developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern. … In the long run, even the most brilliant and unprincipled huckster must expect ruin; but let the hucksters become tired of this and agree to live in peace with one another, and the great rewards are reserved for the one who watches for an opportune time to break his agreement and betray his companions. There is no homeostasis whatever. We are involved in the business cycles of boom and failure, in the successions of dictatorship and revolution, in the wars which everyone loses, which are so real a feature of modern times. (Wiener, 1961: 158–159)

This lack of homeostasis underlines that ‘the market’ has no feedback loop in the strict sense of a self-referential system. The market does not observe itself – only the actors of the market get feedback from their own selections and interpretations of the market as their environment; and those interpretations are considered ‘correct’ if they result in successful selections, that is, if those actors get profit.

But there’s another inference of greatest importance here: the market does not need time. If no past or future need to be constructed, then no time is needed. If an actor does not ‘see the opportunity’, another one will; from the viewpoint of a sovereign state it is irrelevant if credit rating agency A is the first to downgrade its national bonds for instance, or if it is agency B, or vice versa. As long as A or B can influence the market, the result is the same. So, whereas agency B takes time to reconsider its strategies, agency A takes the next step and the results are spread into the market, enter the whole financial system as feedback (in a loose sense) and trigger a cycle of recursive reactions. The case of Lehman Brothers is typical of such a process. The time squeeze, imposed on the society by the combination of ICT networks and the global expansion of instantaneous transactions and communications, resulted to a rapid proliferation of descriptions about the market (analyses, evaluations, predictions), a recursively reconstructed and enriched narration about a forthcoming crisis, coupled with financial reactions, that eventually triggered the crisis; to be sure, it triggered recursive reductions of trust that unavoidably lead to a profound crisis (Krugman, 2009).

It follows then that democracies coupled with a globalized financial system that decides and acts ad hoc and at a very fast pace due to the instrumentalization of ICTs, face a basal problem as they don’t have time to create descriptions that reflect wider social expectations and pave the way to undertaking relevant actions. This of course engenders an asymmetry as democracy relies on time consumption in order to reconstruct its own structures, and the welfare state relies on the economy. At this point, another critical factor is entering our analysis, namely the welfare state and its operations as a sine qua non of a modern western democracy. The welfare state presents itself as an achievement of democracy, and this is by no means a void assumption: continental democracy presents the welfare state as its own achievement and as a constitutive operational structure for its own operations.

Let us try to elaborate on this. The welfare state can be seen as ‘ … the excessive burden that politics place on the state’ (Luhmann, 1990b: 144) while ‘ … the state formula moves from constitutional state to welfare state’ (Luhmann, 1990a: 170, original emphasis). This means that democracy (especially the continental democracy) gets interconnected with a system (the welfare state) that, while based on the constitutional provisions, places a burden on democracy’s shoulders. This development creates a twofold problem: eventually, democracy (when coupled with the welfare state), needs not only time but money as well. But, as the welfare state is continuously expanding, due to the continuous incorporation of new problems as its own subjects, the problem of funding gets worse, and then democracy is forced to turn to the markets for additional funding: right there, democracy and the welfare state start to falter. To be sure, as the national debts of certain states start to rise, the markets evaluate the bonds of those states as ‘high-risk’ and therefore the rates rise accordingly. The rates reflect (supposedly) the risk of the creditor(s) – and if they get too high, they signify the reluctance of the markets to trust specific national economies; this of course is only one explanation, the other one been a case of speculation – in our analysis though we examine only the first case. As Luhmann (1990b: 23) notes

… the growing costs of the welfare state … not only form a daily financial problem but also threaten the differentiation of the political and the economic systems because of the increasing relative size of the state budget in relation to other means.

Even if one assumes that the markets do not intend to put pressure on sovereign economies, still the result is the same: the ability of the markets (coupled with ICTs) to act in real time puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the democratic institutions, or institutions that function in coordination with the first. It should be then of no surprise that the chief of the Eurogroup Jean-Claude Juncker, stated:

Actions on the financial markets are taking place in real time. We don’t always agree at each and every debate on monetary policy, but meanwhile markets are reacting … I’m ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious … I am for secret, dark debates.⁵

These statements, while not unusual, outline some of the aspects of the problem of risk management when it comes to democratic institutions facing the challenges of the markets: the open (and therefore democratic) consultancy is left aside: democracy deliberately disrupts democratic processes in order to protect itself. This is a clear paradox and a contradiction that engenders many similar problems and discontinuities in the democratic process, as we will see next when examining the case of Greece. At this point though, we can conclusively say that, due to the time squeeze phenomenon, as realized by the ICT networks and exploited by the markets, we encounter a shift of the financial risk to political risk. This is a transfer of the burden of the risk from the financial system to the political system of democratic states. Eventually, the investment risk is transformed to political risk: the democratic governments are forced to risk their legitimacy with respect to their constituencies so that the investors will be able to minimize their financial risk. In a few words, the political institutions lack the time needed for consultation and this leads them into a twofold problem: either they do not react instantly and are therefore held responsible for incompetence, or they try to continuously adapt to a non-regulated system (the market) and then they are held responsible for authoritarianism.

The special case study of Greece in the period 2010–2011, will present some of the manifestations and consequences of this process.

Case study: Greece from May 2010 to July 2011

Over the last months of 2009 and the first ones of 2010, the fiscal crisis of Greece and other EU member states (mainly in southern Europe) triggered a number of rapid developments, forcing European leaders to make hard decisions which had been pending and disputed for years. Institutional changes and different interpretations of the treaties faced an unprecedented challenge. This crisis and the efforts to overcome it demonstrated the compression of the political time caused by the rapid development of the instrumentalization of ICT networks. The European Union, repeatedly criticized for slowness and idleness, found itself holding extraordinary weekend summits and teleconferences in order to overtake global financial markets within a very short time limit.

Investigating the root causes of the Greek financial crisis is beyond the purposes of this paper. The fact is that the Greek economy has been running substantial deficits and accumulating a great deal of debt for a long time, and so was vulnerable to the distrust of the markets and speculators. Another fact is that although reluctant to do so, the rest of the European countries had to help the Greeks. The other Eurozone governments were motivated by pure self-interest in bailing out Greece for two main reasons. First, a large amount of Greek bonds were held by financial institutions in other countries. Secondly, a failure to bail out the Greek economy would trigger other effects in the sovereign bond markets of the Euro area. Investors having lost a lot of money by holding Greek bonds would likely dump the bonds of countries like Spain, Ireland and Portugal perceived to have similar budgetary problems.

An interesting part of this modern Greek drama took place between Friday (7 May 2010) and Monday (10 May 2010). During this short period of time the notoriously time-consuming EU processes and interminable negotiations gave way to all-night sessions under strict and very restrictive deadlines. The 16 leaders of the Eurozone met on Friday evening into early Saturday to confirm their previous deal for Greece, which the markets had considered inadequate. With the euro facing its stiffest test since its launch in 1999, the summit – called to discuss economic coordination issues – turned into a dramatic crisis-management session which dragged past midnight. Many hours of negotiations resulted in a brand new system for providing financial support to EU member states that face financial difficulties.

Although leaders reached a deal, it was judged that the markets wouldn’t be satisfied with generic references to a mechanism. Thus EU financial ministers gathered in Brussels for emergency talks, tasked by the leaders of the Euro nations with heading off predatory threats to Euro governments, commercial banks and wider economic recovery by the time markets opened in Asia later on Sunday. Finally, on Monday morning (10 May 2010) both the ‘European Financial Stabilization Mechanism’ (EFSF)⁶ and the complementary €440 billion ‘highly conditional’ Special Purpose Vehicle were established and ready for use. Both Eurozone members and the EU27 demonstrated a sense of purpose and commitment rarely achieved. The European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), G7 and member states seemed satisfied by this development and the Asian stock markets responded (more or less) positively. Europeans believed they had avoided a major euro crisis in the nick of time. As it turned out though, the next year (summer 2011) Greece needed a second bail-out programme, while Ireland and Portugal were already under the support of EU, and Spain, Italy and – to an extent – France were feeling the pressure of the markets.

Our goal here though, is not to describe the characteristics of the economic crisis, but to focus on the manifestations of the crisis at the political level. To begin with, from the very next day following Greece’s bail-out, many of the leaders and ministers that visited Brussels on the weekend of May 7–10, 2010, faced stiff criticism in their domestic political arenas. Legitimatization issues are always present in the EU but these issues are sharpened when major decisions are taken without prior political authorization or at least proper deliberation. There was also a sound criticism from their citizens, for circumventing the legitimate procedures set by their own democratic institutions and in some cases (e.g. Germany), circumventing the constitution itself. The prime minister of Greece also faced stiff criticism in his own country for an agreement that put the Greek economy and fiscal policy under the control of ECB and IMF, without previous agreement of the Greek Parliament. That is, the time squeeze phenomenon brought forth the problem of democratic regimes under a pressure that jeopardized their own essence.

In order to understand the phenomena that took place in Greece from May 2010 to July 2011, a rough sketch of the Greek political system follows. Since the restoration of democracy in Greece (1974), the political system that emerged has consisted of two major parties and numerous smaller ones. The major parties are the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and New Democracy (ND), the first one been a social-democratic party and the latter a liberal-conservative one. Other smaller parties are the Greek Communist Party (KKE), an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party formed in 1918, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), a left party with a European orientation, and the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), a rightist conservative party, with numerous other smaller parties that appear every now and then. Since 1974, ND and PASOK exchanged places in the political system, as government/opposition respectively.

So, immediately after the agreement of May 2010, the Greek government (PASOK) passed an austerity bill (as a precondition for loans from IMF and EU), backed by the MPs of PASOK and LAOS. The ND party, along with KKE and SYRIZA, voted against those measures and also against the bail-out agreement with the IMF, the ECB and the EU; as a result, wages in the public sector were reduced, taxes and sales taxes (VAT) were raised, claims on the welfare state and pensions were also reduced and several social benefits were cut. When later it became apparent that the deficit was not reducing fast enough, newer austerity measures continued to be added in addition to the previous ones, resulting in an enforcement of the recession of the Greek economy that brought the private sector to its knees while unemployment exceeded 16 per cent. In brief, a tight neo-liberal policy was chosen by the government that eventually resulted in the need for a second bail-out plan (summer 2011), funded again by the EU and the IMF, and once more backed by a new austerity bill that was passed by the Greek Parliament on 29 June 2011. This time, only the MPs of PASOK supported the bill.⁷ In every case, either at the major votes or in any other case where new austerity measures were needed, the government argued, every now and again that ‘there is no time for argumentation since the country is going to default in the next few weeks’, thus stressing the problem of time squeeze as an excuse for circumventing the typical democratic processes.⁸

As it might be expected, the people reacted, but some aspects of those reactions were surprising. Initially, the trade unionists reacted with massive demonstrations, and both PASOK and ND were held responsible by the Greek demonstrators for the economic problems of the country. But gradually, the citizens started to self-organize independently from the unions, and in May 2011 – following the example of Spanish demonstrators – they started massive demonstrations in the central square of Athens; the Syntagma (i.e. Constitution) Square was occupied on a 24/7 basis by the so-called ‘Movement of the Indignant’, which raised certain unforeseen peculiarities: beyond opposing the government (which was predictable), they also opposed the opposition, all 300 MPs, all political parties, the political system as a whole, and the unions too. Surely, this is not an unforeseen attitude for small political sects, but demonstrations against the political system that mobilize up to 500,000 people⁹ and which last for around 45 days, are impressive – to say the least. Their central motto was ‘We don’t owe – We don’t sell – We don’t pay’, that is, repudiation of the debt, a refutation of privatization programmes and a suspension of payments (for the debt). The other, interesting issue in terms of our discussion was that of democracy: the ‘Indignant’ put forth a discussion about ‘the problem of democracy’ in Greece, disputing that the bills were voted in through democratic procedures, while additionally disputing that the debt was aggregated through open, democratic decisions and eventually doubting that the current political system can guarantee an open inclusive democracy. What is extraordinary is that the totality of the political system – even parties that have never participated in the governance of Greece – was held responsible. Interestingly enough, the whole movement was organized using the ICT networks, especially the Facebook and Twitter social networking platforms, whilst the coordination and the news updates were facilitated by the use of mobile phones connected to the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network,¹⁰ through which text and media was published in real time in blogs and internet news sites, attracting more people to the demonstration – sometimes from all over Greece.

The Greek government was caught by surprise, while the political parties were reluctant (to say the least) to support that movement. The Communist Party (KKE) clearly condemned those events, New Democracy and PASOK spoke of an ‘understandable reaction of the citizens’, and SYRIZA offered their support but not their participation.¹¹ Eventually, as we have already said, the second austerity bill (known in Greece as the ‘mid-term programme’) was passed by the Parliament on 29 June 2011, amid violent clashes in Syntagma Square that spread throughout the centre of Athens, with the Indignant trying to blockade the MPs’ access to the Parliament.¹² Soon after that, Syntagma Square was abandoned, at least for the rest of the summer of 2011. It is worth mentioning here that a public opinion survey conducted by the Department of Statistics at the University of Economics and Business (Athens) from 10 to 17 June 2011 points out that 67.9 per cent of the participants supported the Indignant, while 69.8 per cent conceived of the ‘movement’ as a ‘positive development’, 60 per cent agreed with their actions, and 80 per cent believed it ‘shows the disenchantment of a great number of citizens towards the political system’.¹³ Those findings were confirmed by similar surveys conducted by specialized private companies.¹⁴

It is thus clear, that the Greek political system jeopardizes its own legitimacy with respect to the citizens and this includes the system as a whole, namely the totality of the Greek political structures and processes and not only the specific governing party. Issues like this are likely to emerge more and more often since markets (especially financial ones) are based on faster procedures than those of states and even more than the EU.

Problems and resolutions

From an examination of the case study of Greece we recognize some of the characteristics of the divergences cutting across the continuum of national and intra-national economic and social policies and politics. De-spatialization of economic transactions and time squeeze as ‘real-time communication’ played a part in the case of Greece. In fact the Greek government seemed unprepared to deal with a case where no time was available; they had to choose between risking their legitimacy and risking an economic default. Similar problems appeared in Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK (with the events of August 2011), Ireland, not to mention the developments in Iceland,¹⁵ with different reactions presented by the citizens but conveying a common factor: the political system is disputed.

Let us try to recapitulate at this point:

The notion of time emerges as systems elicit certain conclusions from their experience and concurrently design their future as their self-description in an ever-changing environment. Self-referential systems consume time in order to compensate the perturbations by their environment (i.e. in order to adapt while preserving their identity).

Democratic regimes are in need of time in order to reconstruct their identity and legitimate their decisions by means of risk distribution.

Markets are not bounded by time; on the contrary, quick action is a typical characteristic of contemporary markets and sometimes it is the decisive factor between economic failure or success.

Information and communication networks are based on real-time communication as their characteristic advantage and are therefore instrumentalized by the markets.

Democracies when coupled with the markets are forced to respond to unpredicted situations that they (the democracies) do not have time to examine as to their consequences in the long run. Those situations are exactly the cases where the markets try to minimize their investment risk. That is, democracies lack the time for risk distribution (consultancy), and therefore the political system is accused of authoritarianism and jeopardizes its legitimacy.

Again then, where does this leave democracy? To understand the nature of the problem, we need to focus on some of the basic notions of contemporary systems theory as articulated by Luhmann.

The theoretical model of a functional differentiated society, does not hold a special place for the political system, neither for the economic system, nor any other functional system for that matter: there is no privileged point of observation from where one can observe society ‘objectively’ and make the ‘best’ selection that will bind society as a whole, even for a limited time. This of course raises the problem of the improbability of modern society as the coordination of differentiated autopoietic systems: modern society is an improbable phenomenon that can be explained only through the employment of the notion of double contingency, as a solution to the problem of complexity. ‘The term complexity is meant to indicate that there are always more possibilities of experience and action than can be actualized’ (Luhmann, 1990a: 26), whereas contingency indicates the freedom of a self-referential system (Willke, 1996), that is its unconditional ability to present itself before its environment in ways that the latter may consider unpredictable. Thus, any self-referential system is contingent and therefore it is a factor contributing to the complexity of the environment of other systems. Additionally, no autopoietic system can directly steer other autopoietic systems, or else modern society would give its place to strict hierarchical models that humanity has left behind long ago. This is the nature of the problem posed by a functional differentiated society. But – since such a society exists – there must be a way (i.e. a process) so that systemic contingency is conditioned in a manner that preserves systems’ autopoiesis and concurrently favours the autopoiesis of the encompassing system(s). The only system able to enforce such a process onto an autopoietic system is that system itself: it conditions its own selections through its own means, that is, the system is self-regulated. The system restricts its own contingency while expecting that the other systems will do the same – and that is what contemporary systems theory calls double contingency. This, by no means violates the autonomy of the system but it makes the improbable (i.e. the functional differentiated society) probable. It is, of course, a continuous cycle of self-regulations triggered by expectations and feedback loops that denotes the immanent instability of modern society and pushes evolution forward as more autonomous systems emerge and complexity gets greater.

We reckon that the key point in our problem is already revealed. Let us repeat it: the only system able to control the regulation of an autopoietic system is that system itself and the experience of complexity forces autopoietic systems to condition their selections by their own means. At first sight, this assumption admittedly resembles more or less the notion of the ‘invisible hand’ as interpreted by some neo-liberal scholars (cf. Smith, 2006), so let us clarify in brief this critical point.

Autopoietic systems live in time, that is, they undergo an endless learning curve, evaluating their own performance with respect to their own expectations. That is, those systems have memory. Needless to say, structures like the constitutional and/or the welfare state, are outcomes of the co-evolution of social memory and social expectations. In the context of modernity they can be seen as safety measures that emerged through numerous and divergent efforts to achieve the widest possible co-ordination of differentiated social systems. That is, society evolves based on its memory and the latter is reflected in certain structures. For instance, as Habermas (2003: 170–171) maintains, there are technologies, strategies, theories, legal and moral representations, that reflect a kind of collective – so to speak – rationale and guarantee (albeit always reviewed due to evolution) society as a whole. Undoubtedly then, the ‘invisible hand’ that ‘leads’ (Smith, 2007: 336) the social or psychic systems to promote social cohesion (or the social ‘good’) is clearly present and visible: one has only to look around to realize that the improbable becomes probable, and – since the social memory cannot be initialized – it has been with us from the very first days of the organized society. This is another way to say that, the functional differentiated society is an evolutionary achievement, perhaps not the best one but nevertheless the one that humanity has been able to develop so far.

If this is the case, then it stands to reason to assume that what is at stake here, is the basic premises of modernity: time squeeze, pushes a certain social system (political system) to de-differentiation, that is disintegration, in a struggle to increase its structural coupling (as coordination) with a non self-referential system, namely the markets. This tendency – which presents itself sometimes as (r)evolutionary – seems quite suspicious considering that society is an autopoietic system that continuously reconstructs itself and in the course of which systematically tries to resolve or circumvent drawbacks and inherent inconsistencies, thus increasing its internal differentiation, that is: evolving. In that sense, if one accepts our main argument, that of the shift of the financial risk to political risk, then it is only logical to expect a shift of the economic crisis to a political crisis. And this is exactly the case we have encountered in Greece in the period 2010–2011: if a system bears an intolerable risk, then than intolerability manifests itself through a crisis with characteristics pertaining to the specific system – in our case, a political crisis.

So, a crucial dilemma emerges: are there available methods and tactics for improving the time-reaction of democratic governments to this problem? Let us see some of the measures the European governments have tried. In 2010 the German government adopted some measures which move towards prevention rather than correction of the economic irregularities caused by the action of the markets, banning for a period of time the naked short selling and naked credit default swaps of Euro area government bonds¹⁶ in an effort to slow down – so to speak – the markets. A year later France, Spain, Italy and Belgium moved in the same direction,¹⁷ amid crisis spreading all over Eurozone and austerity measures taken by European governments one after the other bearing a tremendous political risk. But those tactics do not seem to resolve the problem of legitimacy of the democratic governments in respect to their constitutions, let alone seem able to deal with the economic problems of the sovereign states.

But, as we already said, self-referential systems can be steered exclusively by their own means; it follows that the political system can only find a way out by taking political actions. This is to say that the political system should re-invent itself in the new environment, and this obviously can only be done through self-reflection. Admittedly though, self-reflection consumes time. Therefore, it would be reasonable to deduce that the political system cannot reflect in the midst of a crisis that deprives it of available time. But then, the only option would be disintegration, and as we already saw when we referred to the notion of the ‘invisible hand’, this is not compatible with a modern world, unless there are other options that guarantee concurrent functional differentiation and integration.

On the other hand, we have already seen that some sovereign states were not reluctant to try to slow down the markets, thus reclaiming some time, albeit for a short period. The key point is though, that this time should not be expended to ‘calm the markets’, but rather to allow the political system to re-invent itself. An additional point is that the political system may need to reflect on the distinction between economy and market, where economy is a subsystem of a sovereign state, and market is its internal environment. For instance, the current (2011) discussions about conjoint economic governance in Europe¹⁸ or the Eurozone, seem to verify that this distinction has not yet been dropped, and only has to be coupled with the distinction between the political system and the economy, where the political system claims authority over itself, thus reassuring its niche in modern society. Unless this distinction holds strong the future of democracy does not seem secure; this would not be a problem were we to leave modernity behind, but at this time it seems doubtful that society would select a transition from a differentiated world to a hierarchical one.

Another aspect is that ICTs can offer the grounds for new processes of democratic risk-distribution, offering to the political system the ability to resort instantaneously to ‘public opinion’ whenever political discrepancies emerge. Admittedly though, such tactics are not very simple considering that nowadays citizens expect many critical decisions to be carried out by the political system without their direct involvement. As Scheuerman (2009: 298) points out:

… impatient citizens used to getting quick answers to their questions and concerns often fail to appreciate the formalities and legal niceties of time-consuming legislative procedure and debate. They may instead prefer an actor – typically the executive – who promises quick and decisive action.

An additional dimension of the problem seems to be the inability of the societal system to realize the potential for changing the governance model according to the new needs. Strange as it may sound, a lot of people who use the services of e-commerce or e-learning ignore the concept of e-government or they identify it simply as an aggregation of services for getting various certificates and credentials. The fact is that e-government refers to the very core of democratic procedures: for example, e-votes for the election of local representatives and to have a say in a series of crucial decisions about local, state, intra-state or inter-state policies and polities are already technically possible. The relevant procedures have to tackle the problem of the anonymity of the voters, which can be secured by contemporary technical means. But, is anonymity the main problem restraining participative democracy or is the demand for anonymity another expression of the reluctant participation of the citizens in democratic procedures, cultivated and consolidated by the authoritarian governmental practices of the democracies of the present? The answer is complicated and beyond the scope of this paper. That question though draws attention back to the inconsistencies of modern democracies, which seem to be revealed and exposed by the introduction and function of digital networks and the instantaneity of the markets’ processes. Inconsistencies and divergences have deep roots in the past and are interconnected with the process of evolution of representative democracies. Paul Virilio seems quite right when he points out that the forces of technology are speeding up the world to such a degree that things, even reality, are starting to disappear, but he does not pay so much attention to the processes establishing technology as a one-way option for the Western world.

Today the social and political systems of this world seem fragmented and inefficient in coping with globalization and the perspectives and problems imposed by ICT technologies’ proliferation. It is the responsibility of governments and citizens altogether to present certain solutions to resolve them, if they are able to self-reflect on the basis of their own expectations, and this holds true largely for the political system.

Conclusions

The problem democracy is facing nowadays, lies in the fact that democratic governments identify the market as if it were a self-referential system; but the unforeseen speed of the market’s processes, facilitated by ICT networks, reveals inherent problems of the representative democracy model. To be sure, the market is not a self-referential system, as we argued, and therefore no double contingency is feasible, for the markets do not have an internal mechanism to constrain their own contingency; so the regulation of contingency is one-sided, that is from the governments’ (and consequently from the society’s) side.

As we already noted, from a systems theoretical point of view, the only way out for the political system lies in self-reference and autopoiesis. As William Rasch (2000: 145) maintains:

What presents itself as a description of modernity also takes on the force of a prescription. The description of modernity as differentiated needs to be read both as an empirical fact – ‘differentiation exists’ – and as an imperative – ‘differentiation ought to (continue to) exist.’ That differentiation exists and ought to exist translates, then, into a political injunction: ‘Thou shall not dedifferentiate!’

One then is admittedly tempted to argue about the need to control markets excessively. We resist that temptation for two main reasons. First, following the injunction presented above, science approaches phenomena from a scientific point of view and therefore ought to avoid moral injunctions (Luhmann, 1990b); science organizes knowledge but does not occupy a privileged point of observation (Mavrofides et al., 2010), supposedly transcending functional differentiation; therefore, the scientific system can observe from its own viewpoint, but eventually the decisions, in the case we are examining, belong to the political system – any other approach would render the political system useless and therefore obsolete. Secondly, the markets offer – from a systems theoretical perspective – a space within which different ideas, options and innovative approaches can be tested. That is, the markets create an environment that favours the emergence of a multitude of solutions that assure the requisite variety and redundancy (Ashby Ross, 1957), answers to problems that appear day by day: a test bed functioning through evolutionary selections. This though, as we have already argued, does not cancel the need for regulations, since the latter are also an evolutionary achievement and are evolving in interdependence with society as a whole.

Finally, it may be somewhat useful to quote here an excerpt from an article by Herbert Brün:

The definition of a problem and the action taken to solve it largely depend on the view which the individuals or groups that discovered the problem have of the system to which it refers. A problem may thus find itself defined as a badly interpreted output, or as a faulty output of a faulty output device, or as a faulty output due to a malfunction in an otherwise faultless system, or as a correct but undesired output from a faultless and thus undesirable system. All definitions but the last suggest corrective action; only the last definition suggests change, and so presents an unsolvable problem to anyone opposed to change. (Brün, 1970)

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

The authors of this article would like to thank Dr Evangelia Dimaraki for her help in editing the final version of it.

Notes

References

Ashby Ross

(1957) An Introduction to Cybernetics. New York. Chapman & Hall Ltd.

Bateson

(2000) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.

Beer S (1973) Fanfare for effective freedom. The Third Richard Goodman Memorial Lecture, delivered at Brighton Polytechnic.

Brün H (1970) Technology and the Composer. Conference proceedings: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, June 10, Stockholm. Available at: http://www.herbertbrun.org/techcomp.html.

Castells

(2001) The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Clarke

Hansen

MBN

(2009) Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory. Durham, NC. Duke University Press.

Durkheim

(1994) Les règles de la méthode sociologique (Greek translation). In: Kouzelis

Psychopaedis

(eds) Epistemology of the Social Sciences. Athens. Nisos, pp. 87–116.

Floridi

(1999) Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction. London and New York. Routledge.

Habermas

(2003) On the Pragmatics of Communication. Cambridge. Polity Press.

10.

Hassan

(2003) The Chronoscopic Society: Globalization, Time and Knowledge in the Network Society. New York. Peter Lang.

11.

Hope

(2009) Conflicting temporalities: State, nation, economy and democracy under global capitalism. Time & Society 18(1): 62–85.

12.

Krugman

(2009) The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (Greek edition). Athens. Kastaniotis. Αλαβάνου Αριάδνη (Trans).

13.

Linz

(1998) Democracy’s time constraints. International Political Science Review/Revue internationale de science politique 19(1): 19–37.

14.

Luhmann

(1986) The autopoiesis of social systems. In: Geyer

van der Zouwen

(eds) Sociocybernetic Paradoxes. London. Sage, pp. 172–192.

15.

Luhmann

(1990a) Essays on Self-Reference. New York. Columbia University Press.

16.

Luhmann

(1990b) Political Theory in the Welfare State, J Bednarz Jr (Trans). Berlin. de Gruyter.

17.

Luhmann

(1995) Social Systems. Palo Alto, CA. Stanford University Press.

18.

Luhmann

(2002) Theories of Distinction. Palo Alto, CA. Stanford University Press.

19.

Luhmann

(2008/1993) Risk: A Sociological Theory, Rhodes Barrett (Trans). Piscataway, NJ. Aldine Transactions.

20.

Maturana

(1970) Biology of cognition. In: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, Holland. Reidel Publishing Company.

21.

Maturana

(2005) The origin and conservation of self-consciousness: Reflections on four questions by Heinz von Foerster. Kybernetes 34(1/2): 54–88.

22.

Maturana

Varela

(1980) Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, Holland. Reidel Publishing Company.

23.

Mavrofides

Kameas

Papageorgiou

Los

(2011) On the entropy of social systems: A revision of the concepts of entropy and energy in the social context. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 28: 353–368.

24.

Mavrofides T, Papageorgiou D and Kameas A (2010) Science as a second-order observer: Proposing a reference influence factor. World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI 2010), 2nd International Symposium on Peer Reviewing (ISPR 2010), Orlando, USA. Vol. III, pp.186–191.

25.

Mitchell

(2000) e-topia: ‘Urban Life, Jim – but Not as We Know It’. Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press.

26.

Quine van Orman

(1960) Word and Object. Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press.

27.

Quine van Orman

(1980) From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.

28.

Rasch

(2000) Niklas Luhmann’s Modernity: The Paradoxes of Differentiation. Stanford, CA. Stanford University Press.

29.

Rosa

(2009) Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronized high-speed society. In: Rosa

Scheuerman

(eds) High Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity. University Park, PA. The Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 77–111.

30.

Schedler

Santiso

(1998) Democracy and time: An invitation. International Political Science Review/Revue internationale de science politique 19(1): 5–18.

31.

Scheuerman

(2009) Citizenship and speed. In: Rosa

Scheuerman

(eds) High Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity. University Park, PA. The Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 287–306.

32.

Smith

(2007/1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Hampshire. Harriman House Ltd.

33.

Smith

(2006) Adam Smith’s Political Philosophy: The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order. New York. Routledge.

34.

Spencer-Brown

(2008) Laws of Form. Leipzig. Bohmeier Verlag.

35.

Viskovatoff

(2004) The market as an environment. Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines 14(2): 55–70.

36.

von Bertalanffy

(1968) General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York. Braziller.

37.

von Foerster

(2003) Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition. New York. Springer.

38.

Wiener

(1961) Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York and London. MIT Press/John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

39.

Willke H (1996/1993) Systemtheorie: eine Einführung in die Grundprobleme der Theorie sozialer Systeme (Greek edition), N Livos (Trans). Kritiki.