Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

150Chapter 4reserve for emergencies, like the instruments of violence, but exists onlyin its actualization . ... Power is actualized only where word and deed havenot parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal.17Now, the agreement between words and deeds may be the yardstickfor a regime's legitimacy. But this does not yet explain the changein aggregate condition that communicative power must undergobefore it can assume, in the form of administrative power, thosesanctioning, organizing, and executive functions that the system ofrights depends on and presupposes, as already shown.The concept of communicative power requires a differentiationin the concept of political power. Politics cannot coincide as awhole with the practice of those who talk to one another in orderto act in a politically autonomous manner. The exercise of politicalautonomy implies the discursive formation of a common will, notthe implementation of the laws issuing therefrom. The concept ofthe political in its full sense also includes the use of administrativepower within the political system, as well as the competition foraccess to that system. The constitution of a power code implies thatan administrative system is steered through authorizations forrendering collectively binding decisions. This leads me to proposethat we view law as the medium through which communicativepower is translated into administrative power. For the transformationof communicative power into administrative has the characterof an empowerment within the framework of statutory authorization.We can then interpret the idea of the constitutional state in generalas the requirement that the administrative system, which is steeredthrough the power code, be tied to the lawmaking communicativepower and kept free of illegitimate interventions of social power(i.e., of the factual strength of privileged interests to assert themselves). Administrative power should not reproduce itself on itsown terms but should only be permitted to regenerate from theconversion of communicative power. In the final analysis, thistransfer is what the constitutional state should regulate, thoughwithout disrupting the power code by interfering with the selfsteeringmechanism of the administrative system. In sociologicalterms, the idea of government by law illuminates only the politicalside ofbalancing the three major forces of macrosocial integration:money, administrative power, and solidarity.