ABSTRACT
Most descriptions of modern politics are too narrow to offer a view of major transformations which do not remain enclosed in the self-description of the processes in the political system itself. The question concerning modern power is not a question concerning its quiddity. It is, primarily, the question about its contrast with pre-modern power. Secondarily, it is the question about ways in which its late evolution contrasts with that of the other media of modern social communication. The modern transformation of society can be interpreted as the differentiation of its organic, hierarchical and power-centred pre-modern fabric into subsystems built around autonomously operating, heterarchically coupled functions. What is distinctive about the transmutation of power is without parallel in the other systems of social communication. The doxic structure which underscores and supports such a re-politicisation is rooted in the rootedness of politics in epics, culture and religion.
