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

350Chapter 8harmony between, on the one hand, this growth in the complexityof systems that are "entitled to take part in the arrangement" and,on the other, the realization of citizens' constitutional rights.Certainly one can often justify a high level of systemic differentiationeven from a normative standpoint. And as long as risingcomplexity in public administration and the capitalist economywas paralleled by the increasing inclusion of citizens, one couldassume, all in all, that gains in functional differentiation coincidedwith normative progress in the realization of equal rights. However,these parallels were a matter of contingent, and hitherto in no waylinear, correlations. Moreover, there are many indications ofcounterdevelopments. To name just one of these, in the fragmentedsocieties of today' s economically interdependent OECD-world, theprosperity and security enjoyed by a majority of the population isincreasingly accompanied by the segmentation of a neglected andpowerless underclass that is disadvantaged in practically everyrespect. Conflicts arise between the neocorporatistically negotiatedpolicies and the constitutional protection ofunderorganizedparts of the population at the periphery of society. These conflictsarise not only as the result of an unequal distribution of socialrewards but also because the loss of collective goods affects differ-. ent social classes selectively.Hence the idea of government by law is vitiated if sociofunctionalsystems are constitutionally released from their instrumental roleand promoted to "ends in themselves." The "autonomy and differences"of citizens must then compete with that of systems for legalprotection, even within the "official" circulation of power. Theconstitutional structure of the political system is preserved only ifgovernment officials hold out against corporate bargaining partnersand maintain the asymmetrical position that results from theirobligation to represent the whole of an absent citizenry, whose willis embodied in the wording of statutes. Even in attunement processes,the bonds of delegation must not tear away from actualdecision making. Only in this way is the connection with the publicof citizens preserved, the public that is both entitled and in theposition to perceive, identify, and publicly thematize the socialintolerability of deficient or disturbed functional systems. Indeed,only in the corporatist arrangements do these systems supposedly