ABSTRACT
Starting from the seminal debate whether social systems theory represents ideological knowledge production (Habermas and Luhmann 1971), this chapter discusses the thorny interrelation between the different but intertwined concepts of theory and ideology in the context of Niklas Luhmann’s work. In so doing, its argument is based on a close, but unorthodox, re-reading of the Luhmannian theoretical architecture, which focuses on communication as the main stimulus of social differentiation and conceptualises the link between theory and ideology accordingly. While Jürgen Habermas distinguishes the normative, emancipatory critique of functionalist reasoning in social theory from technocratic, ideologically motivated systems approaches (Habermas 1987, 1971), this difference is less clear-cut for Luhmann. He contends that theory – critical or otherwise and including his own, we might assume – becomes ideology whenever it is reintroduced into self-descriptions of society (Luhmann 1990f, 1998, 1076–1080). Drawing on Luhmann’s concept of a polycentric, heterarchic and unevenly developed world society and its perception in International Relations (IR), the chapter explores the theoretical underpinnings and consequences of his particular way of differentiating and interrelating theory and ideology. In so doing, its argument speaks to two different sets of literature. While the chapter’s way of reading Luhmann’s work is inspired by a growing movement to re-appropriate its radical potential (Amstutz and Fischer-Lescano 2013; la Cour and Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 2013c; Moeller 2012), the argument also critically addresses attempts at introducing Luhmannian perspectives to IR (among others: Albert et al. 2013a; Albert et al. 2010; Helmig and Kessler 2007; Kessler 2012).
