Complexity characterizes the outer appearances of the multidimensional processes through which self-organizing entities develop their domain of autonomy. The aspects of the socio-political complex which different perspective highlights are meant to be relevant to the discussion of some of the most pressing questions facing the members of the "post-modern" societies. The reproduction of the political system is only one phase in the reproduction of the political community as a whole, a process in which the "done-by" are more personally, if not always more actively, involved than in the operation of the political system. While any autopoietic being possesses an identity whose reproduction is synonymous with the preservation of its life, the symbolic richness of political communications is such that the identification of the identity of a given polity is bound to constitute a contentious issue.