ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the increased social and epistemological complexity threatens political decision-makers by obscuring from them the likely consequences of their decisions. Niklas Luhmann says that contingency', or the unpredictability of future events, is modern society's defining attribute'. Hence we might say that a social personality comes into being when elite decisions made under conditions of cognitive indeterminacy lead to the inscription of guiding heuristics within elite culture. Very similarly, Jon Elster argues that political decision-making is, generally speaking, characterised by a radical cognitive indeterminacy' where, as he puts it, theory is impotent' and we cannot learn from experience and experiments. The degree of fit between leadership decision and elite social personality may serve for them as a barometer for the extent to which elite power is distributed downwards, and for the extent to which leadership decisions either remain true to the 'soul' of the organisation or serve other interests.
