ABSTRACT
All political systems need some way of assuring social order. Order guarantees peace and physical security but also hermeneutic stability. Only if some measure of social order is assured will it be possible to interpret the world coherently, to plan and to act rationally. For order to be established, a way must be found of dealing with diversity, with the coexistence of potentially conflicting ideas, projects and goals. In the process of working out such conflicts, power will come to be distributed in a certain fashion. The problem of social order will thus presuppose the existence of ways of setting a public agenda, ways of determining rules and reaching decisions and a distribution of legitimate authority.
