The Throne is Not Empty: A Calculus of Power*

Dirk Baecker**

Abstract: Giorgio Agamben's (The Kingdom and the Glory, Stanford, CA, 2011) rediscovery
of the theological notion of oikonomia as the frame to think about government and
administration is sociologically suggestive. Yet we seem to have to drop the idea of the
'empty throne,' or hetoimasia tou thronou, as interpreted by Agamben. This paper argues that
we do not need metaphysics to set up the important distinction between rule (auctoritas) and
government (potestas), as it got its canonical formulation by Adolphe Thiers. Instead we
regard this metaphysics together with its theological backing by the distinction between God's
absolute power (potentia absoluta) and this very power bound by His previous decisions
(power ordinata) as the both anticipatory and ideological formulations of a social calculus of
power, which in fact does not need kings nor gods but just the other (sozius) to come into
operation.
Key words: fear, glory, power, oikonomia, social calculus
I.
Giorgio Agamben's (2011) rediscovery of the theological notion of oikonomia as the frame
for thinking about government and administration is sociologically suggestive in every aspect
but one. The three main ideas in Agamben's reconstruction of the theological genealogy of
any political economy are that (a) the world is created by God as a perfectly ordered one,
which (b) provides for anarchy in worldly matters to let people choose in freedom a behavior
in compliance with creation, such that (c) any government has to provide for the means to
attain and execute a power that treasures arbitrariness to celebrate compliance. Angels in
heaven and officials on earth make sure that human beings never lose sight of an order
harnessing its own degrees of freedom.
These three ideas are convincing even if we drop the further idea of the 'empty throne,' or
hetoimasia tou thronou, as interpreted by Agamben (2011, chap. 8). Agamben needs the idea
of the empty throne to develop a certain metaphysics of sovereign rule, which is all the more
glorious the more inactive and indeed evasive it is, such that any government actually
administrating worldly matters both gains interpretative leeway in any concrete situation and
may at any time be questioned about the legitimation it claims. This paper argues that we do
not need metaphysics to set up the important distinction between rule (auctoritas) and
*
**

Manuscript of a talk and discussion, "Herrschaft im System: Zur Kontrolle von Macht", with Heinz Bude
at Schaubhne Berlin, Berlin, March 19, 2012.
Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, www.zu.de/kulturtheorie, www.dirkbaecker.com.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2025560

government (potestas), as canonically formulated by Adolphe Thiers (in a newspaper article

tellingly titled "Du gouvernement par les chambres", Le National, February 4, 1830): "Le roi
n'administre pas, ne gouverne pas, il rgne" (see also Agamben 2011, chap. 4). Instead we
regard this metaphysics together with its theological backing by the distinction between God's
absolute power (potentia absoluta) and this very power bound by His previous decisions
(power ordinata) as the both anticipatory and ideological formulation of a social calculus of
power that in fact does not need kings or gods but only the other (sozius) to come into
operation.
As the metaphysics and theology of power maintain, if only to doubt, a substance or
essence of sovereignty as its mostly and for the better hidden ground, sociology instead opts
for a combination of material, social, and temporal problems to be solved by the means of
power. To substitute for the metaphysics and theology of power, whose social function we do
not disbelieve, we here opt for a social theory of power that looks for conflicts to be fostered
and solved by the political sovereign (see also Rasch 2004) and adds the economy as the
balance spring of the political.
Thus, this paper aims to frame and regain Agamben's rediscovery of oikonomia firstly as a
core idea of political economy and then as a notion still fruitful in developing a complex
systems understanding of a calculus of power.

II.
In fact a 4th century mosaic in San Paolo fuori le mure in Rome rendered without the angels
and without the five ministrants (cheerleaders?) instructed by two other angels as the cover of
Agamben's book in its Italian and American editions already shows that the throne is not
empty:

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2025560

Hetoimasia tou thronou, Preparation of the Throne

Apart from the two angels responsible for preparing the throne, the Cross and the instruments
of Christ's passion behind the throne, there is also a Gospel book lying on the cushion of the
throne, apparently open. As 'hetoimasia' literally means the 'being prepared for, and by' of the
throne and not its 'emptiness' the throne is indeed still devoid of the king but already marked
if not occupied by Scripture, which tells the king where his power, if any, may come from
and what he will be obliged to respect (and all other instances of an 'empty throne' quoted by
Agamben in his chapter 8.23 are equally instances of a throne already marked by various
signs and symbols of the 'glory' of rule). The preparation of the throne is tantamount to the
doubling of the body of the king into one which is mortal and another which belongs to some
immortal kingdom (Kantorowicz 1957), which later will witness its transformation from
Augustinus' civitas dei into the civitas terrena first of princes, then of parliaments (Thiers'
chambres), and eventually of bureaucracies, thus over and again distinguishing the person of
the king from his function.
Our question here is whether and how analysis of the emergence and framing of political
power changes if we switch from the somehow misleading picture of the empty throne to
acknowledgment of Scripture already seated upon it. To be sure, we would want to maintain
Agamben's description of the necessary inaction (anapauesthai) of both God and king to
mark the character of their power consisting, as it were, not in commanding subordinates but
in letting them develop their own well-framed power. We would even like to retain a certain
notion of emptiness as conceived of by other political theories, as well, possibly marking the

distinction of men's action within the world from God's creation of the world, on one hand,
and the king attending to this distinction, on the other. Ernesto Laclau (1994), for example,
understands 'empty signifiers' as signifying the necessary ambivalence of any system of
power, which consists in not positively determining the actions of subordinates but in giving
them specific backing to deal with decisions they will have to take for themselves. An empty
signifier marks the undecidability of issues only we human beings may thus decide (von
Foerster 2003; see also Derrida 1988). Similarly, Niklas Luhmann (1997, chap. 2. XI)
conceives of power as of any other symbolically generalized medium as featuring a 'zero
method' to symbolize within the use of the medium the limits of this use. Emptiness thus
means negation, and negation means reflecting the boundaries of a concept, opening the
possibility to either accept or reject it depending on the overall assessment of a situation.
Thus, as the king, viz. his mortal body, is conspicuously absent, there is no lack of
operations already in place. This is what the Scripture tells the people watching. A system of
power is already in place and demands a kind of attention not to be disturbed by having to
look at the mortal body, its gestures and facial expressions, its talk and its trumps, its force
and its weaknesses. Any political theory begins at the moment when there is an understanding
and notion not just of the figure of the king but also of the grounds of the system he depends
on as well as maintains and occasionally even initiates. The so-called empty throne splits the
attribution of power into an acknowledgment of the figure of the king, on one hand, and of
the grounding of the system, on the other. The glorification (doxology, doxa logia, 'glory
saying') of the king and his kingdom is both the celebration of any convergence of the figure
and its grounds and a constant threat to withdraw the respect for the figure when seen to be no
longer in congruence with the grounds.
The same goes for the glorification of inaction, which Agamben (2011, chap. 8) eloquently
rediscovers for much of theological and philosophical thinking (Aristotle, Philo, Paulus,
Spinoza). Inaction is the other side of a distinction that knows action as well, even though this
side of the distinction is allocated to slaves, the management of households, trade, and the
occasional war. The glorification of inaction is only the mark of many actions undertaken to
maintain the perfect states of cosmos, polis, and oikos. Even noble men act when the perfect
world is threatened by corruption. Political and economic thinking, however, sets in if the
question is no longer one of action or inaction but of blocking action or obtaining action
(White 1992).

III.
We propose to see Scripture seated on the so-called empty throne not in terms of the content
of the Gospel, fascinating though it is, but in terms of the medium, which here once again is
the more effective message (McLuhan 1964). Scripture spreads the Gospel but also presents
its audience with a form of writing that greatly extending the time horizons any society had
previously to be able to deal with. In fact it is not just the extension of these time horizons
toward a remembered past and a future to be envisioned but the present control of memories
and expectations relating to past and future that was differentiated and elaborated as no oral
communication dealing only with the present flow of words, framed by the faint memory of
forefathers and the unrelenting expectation of the eternal recurrence of the same, had ever
been able to imagine (Ong 1982).
If God had not already been invented, He would now have to be invented in order to be
able to imagine what kind of communication framed the decisions of men who, due to
receipts, bonds, and bills they carried with them, began to calculate what to do in what kind
of present and future relying on what kind of past. God's rule is indeed the rule of time, as the
Church, to be sure, was quick to discover. The message of Scripture, embedded in its
medium, is the possible fine-tuning of memories and expectations, backed by ideas of original
sin, the last judgment, and eternal salvation. This fine-tuning of memories and expectations
with respect to present action to be undertaken or forgone is the reason why Max Weber was
able to relate world religion and economic behavior by asking what rewards (Prmien) were
spelled out for what kind of behavior (Weber 1988). Without the step from oral to written
communication, however, this kind of mutual reframing of economics in terms of religion,
and of religion in terms of economics, would not have been possible.
If the message of Scripture is that of the rule of time, and if any king for whom the throne
is prepared is not considered the ruler but the governor, that is not the sovereign but its
administration, the question is then how the anarchical aspect of oikonomia emphasized by
Agamben (2011) relates to the emergence, maintenance, and control of power. Evidently, the
sphere of the economy is not itself the sovereign or ruler. The economy is the sphere to be
administrated by means of a power stemming from the feedback of a calculus of past and
future into any present decision. The distinction is subtle but it is necessary to be able to see
how politics interferes in economics, and vice versa.
The track we are trying to follow is an idea perhaps first written down by Xenophon
(1970) in his Socratic discourse about the oikonomikos, the good manager of a household.
The oikonomikos, not to be confused with the homo oeconomicus, thinks and calculates in

terms of a political economy, which is not to be reduced to a calculus of gains and costs, but
encompasses the question of how any sozius is willing to engage in not exactly common but
at least mutual concerns. Xenophon's discourse, highly esteemed by Roman readers (Burford
1996), is about a noble who manages to excel in splendid 'inaction' (but this is an
exaggeration; actually he actively represents his household in all political and economic
aspects on the market and in public) only because he is successful in ensuring that his young
wife takes care of the household. The wife in turn treats children, servants, slaves, and
livestock in a similar manner. Any of these people can well be imagined to take his or her
moment of conspicuous inaction just to show and check that everything is done well. There is
no idleness in such a household, but only consummatory action in the interest of perfection.
The key to the political economy inherent in this discourse is both given and withhold in
book XXI, section 12, when Isomachos, the noble man and oikonomikos (good household
manager, to be distinguished from the oikonomos, the plain household manager), explains to
Socrates how in fact he manages his noble affairs by ensuring that everyone involved is a
'willing subject': "For it seems to me that this good to rule over willing subjects is not
altogether a human thing but, rather, divine; it is clearly given only to those who have been
genuinely initiated into the mysteries of moderation; but tyrannical rule over unwilling
subjects, it seems to me, they give to those whom they believe worthy of living like Tantalus
in Hades, who is said to spend unending time in fear of a second death." These 'mysteries of
moderation', of sophrosyne, have been the key to any political economy ever since. The gist,
if not explicit, of the whole discourse is that these mysteries are the mysteries of the
emergence of a willingness to abstain from unworried consumption now in order to be
rewarded by fully funded consumption tomorrow. This is of course the most trivial insight
into any economic calculus, yet it becomes nontrivial considering how such'moderation' is
achieved among a host of people with highly divergent moods, whims, and expectations. This
is where politics interferes with economics and vice versa.
Max Weber possibly rediscovered these mysteries of moderation when, in his usual,
somewhat pedantic yet often rewarding way, he set out to define what 'economic action'
(Wirtschaften, a verb, not a noun, covering not only 'economizing' but also, as the situation
may require, 'lavishing') is all about. Apparently this definition occurred only late in the
development of the different manuscripts that his widow Marianne Weber collected under the
title 'Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft' (Schluchter 1989; see Baecker 2007). It reads as follows:
"'Wirtschaften' soll eine friedliche Ausbung von Verfgungsgewalt heien " (Weber 1990,
p. 31). The American translation unfortunately defuses the most fascinating aspect of the
definition: "'Economic action' (Wirtschaften) is any peaceful exercise of an actor's control

over resources which is in its main impulse oriented towards economic ends" (Weber 1978, p.
63). Weber himself will have been astounded at his own definition and will have noted the
telling contradiction between 'friedliche Ausbung' (peaceful exercise) and
'Verfgungsgewalt' (power of control, but in its German wording referring to 'violence' as
well), on the other. His astonishment is documented first by the three following, densely
written pages in which Weber relates the power of control to physical violence ('Pragma der
Gewalt') and tries to demonstrate that Ausbung' is not identical with physically violent
action and by his apparent attempt to revise the whole series of manuscripts to provide a
complete reconsideration of the relationship between his sociology of politics and sociology
of economics (see again Schluchter 1989).
Max Weber did not have the time to rewrite 'Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft', let alone his
'Outline of Socio-Economics' of which it was to be a chapter (which is also saying that
'Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft' in by no means a principal distinction in Weber's sociology; it is
a minor one completing a series like 'Wirtschaft und Natur,' 'Wirtschaft und Technik,'
Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftswissenschaft,' and so on; nor is 'Gesellschaft' a properly Weberian
term; he always preferred to talk of 'Vergesellschaftung' in the sense of historically indexed
and thus contingent processes of sociation). At the time of his death he had turned his
attention to the paradox that political economy could possibly organize the whole field of
economy and politics within their social context. Of course he would not have liked bringing
his own approach closer to Karl Marx's talk of the contradictions of 'capitalism,' nor would he
have had the theoretical means to deal with paradox as an empirical fact bringing forth a
whole field of action. In the long run, he would possibly rather have been tempted to avoid
paradox as an epistemological fault. But as it was, he presented his definition, and that is why
we now have a definition that provided a basic insight into the field of political economy.
Weber's insight is the acknowledgment that some violence inherent in the most peaceful
economic action and that it is only with respect to 'society' interfering that this violence is
domesticated to a degree that allows 'willing subjects' to work peacefully to provide for their
own future and to accept forms of custom, civilization, organization, and rationality, all terms
for both indicating and distinguishing, that is reflecting on and changing certain social
arrangements for first deferring and then obtaining satisfaction. Domestication must be both
accomplished in concrete situations and backed by social arrangements addressing two
contingencies dealt with interdependently. 'Society' is the name of a calculus relating political
will and economic action. It is a combinatorial calculus of people, matters, and time
dimensions, which recursively draws on contexts to secure actions, and on actions to check
for contexts.

IV.
Oikonomia combines the anarchy of secular matters with the rule of a divine order. How are
we to translate this conundrum into a sociological theory of a political economy, let alone into
a complex systems notion of a social calculus of power? Of course, Adam Smith's idea of the
Invisible Hand springs to mind, and Smith was certainly still plainly aware of the theological
tradition to which he was alluding. We would indeed have to develop ideas on the
information and risk architecture of different markets to spell out how the political economy
translates into the networks of complex systems actually producing the order and exchange of
economic action (White 1981 and 2002; Luhmann 1988; Baecker 1988). But an explicit
notion of the political inherent in such an economics of markets would still be lacking.
We need to take seriously the fact of power informing and organizing the whole field of
political economy. And we need to combine it with the message of time vicariously presented
by Scripture seated on the throne. And, last not least, we need to do all this without repeating
the mistake of the Hobbesian tradition and criticized by Talcott Parsons (1977: 209/10) of
identifying political power with economic calculus. It is one thing to coerce somebody with
the threat of negative sanctions or the withdrawal of positive sanctions, and it is something
quite different to let somebody experience the benefit of sacrifice. What we and every
political economy are interested in is precisely the combination of power and calculus to let
people experience not just domination but their range of choice, as well.
Power, as Niklas Luhmann understood after more than twenty years of research (Luhmann
1979 and 1997, pp. 355-7; see also Crozier/Friedberg 1980; and Baecker 2009a), is not only
exercised by threatening the other with violence they then seek to avoid by obeying; it is also
literally creating the discovery of arbitrariness (Willlkr) if not outright free will. Positively
and negatively, by threatening to withdraw benefits and privileges or by threatening to refrain
from further communication or even by actually using physical violence, the very moment
somebody claims power over somebody else reveals both the possibility of choice and thus of
arbitrariness (Willkr). The person giving an order must have chosen to do so and in so
deciding in fact risks not being able to follow through, showing that he lacks the means. And
the person receiving an order discovers that he still chooses to accept or refuse it, depending
on further prospects, on support from others for either acceptation or rejection, or on technical
insight.
The exercise of power allows people to discover the possibility of free will, not the other
way around. It is not that freedom first prevails to be restricted by someone exercising power

over others willing to obey. Some actors discover that they have power over others, which
shows both that they have a choice.
If we return to the representative situation Xenophon and Max Weber describe, a noble
man instructing his wife, a supervisor instructing his subordinate, a producer instructing his
suppliers, or partners instructing their partners in various deals, we understand the mutual
implication of politics and economics. The very possibility of choosing otherwise, in modern
terms contingency, lets people calculate how to rely on each other in both accepting a rule and
making provision for an uncertain future. Due to the arbitrariness from which they suffer or in
which they delight, they are on the constant lookout for alternatives, searching their field of
action for consolidation or evasion. As not only Xenophon and Max Weber but all
considerate economics has always been keen to explicate, economic action is above all about
providing for an uncertain future (see only Menger 1968; Robbins 1972; Paulsen 1953;
Luhmann 1970) not just about material or immaterial scarcity.
Scarcity is only the occasion for looking to both future and present and being wary of
present temptations or fearful about an uncertain future. The most important decisions to be
taken by economic actors are about what present and future goods and services are to be
considered scarce and thus the object of economic action (Weber 1981; Luhmann 1988;
Baecker 2006). There is no 'nature' to determine this in advance. Economic decisions are as
selective and thus dependent on 'culture' and 'society' as any other decisions (Douglas 1982).
They constitute negotiations on what goods and services are to be considered scarce and/or
abundant, depending on the settlement of technical questions of production, economizing, and
consumption; on how social labor is to be divided (note that it is not division sociale du
travail but division du travail social in Durkheim 1998); and on how past, present, and future
are to be allocated in order to deal with the decisions considered appropriate.
The venerable principle of reward for renouncement comes in fact as its own double. One
has to be rewarded to renounce, which is the political element of the affair, and one has to be
rewarded with goods and services deferred to some later time, which is its economic element.
There are also two sides to power and the power of control, as they are unhappily
exercised over people and resources, but then turn into the capacity to actually fulfill desires
and compensate for displeasure.
Thus, political economy is to be regarded in this context as ruled by an uncertain future
shared by everyone involved, such that government and administration may stem from the
actual distribution and allocation of pleasure and displeasure, deferment and satisfaction,
order and obedience. The uncertainty of the future is translated into the observation of the
arbitrariness (Willkr), i.e. risk and danger, of any decision actually to be taken. This

 10

arbitrariness both alarms and assures all involved, because any decision may turn out to have
been the wrong one, but only decisions are able to deal with this. Add the fear of the future
and the glory of a regime turning out to have taken the appropriate decisions, and we obtain
the following power calculus of political economy, using the notation of the calculus of
indications proposed by George Spencer-Brown (1972):

Power = Arbitrariness Glory Fear

We mark 'arbitrariness' first, because without it there are no decisions to be watched but only
ideologies of traditional rule, of inherent necessities (Sachzwnge), or of allegedly rational
unambiguity. But the next indication from which 'arbitrariness' is to be distinguished must be
'glory', because without it nobody would be willing to become a willing subject in the first
place. This is why it is so important that the game is already running when additional
household members, employees, or partners enter it. The game must contain hints of either
actual or potential glory to convince everybody else to both accept its arbitrariness and
explore and exploit it further. But, of course, without 'fear' there would be no reason to look
for this kind of glory, and this is why it is decisive that arbitrariness both fuels fear, because
any decision could prove wrong, and assuages it, because at least done is doing something
about it.
Fear and glory are not psychological, but sociological phenomena, to be sure. They are
accompanied by physical sensations and emotions (how else could they make themselves
felt?) but they are aroused socially and they are meant to manage and moderate the situations
in which they are aroused with respect to the people, the facts, and the memories and
expectations bearing on those situations. Emotions, as Charles Darwin (2005; see also
Baecker 2004) has emphasized, stem from social environments, mark them as further
situational facts, and thus help to deal with them. Thus, fear and glory are multivariate
phenomena. They may variously be aroused by people threatening or being glorified, by
shortages experienced or being overcome, and by time horizons of past, present, and future
being packed or eased. This is why arbitrariness dominates the scene in the first place.
Without it, the many possible combinations of people, provisions, and time horizons to be
feared and glorified could never be explored to suit a specific situation at hand. Any subtleties
in the exercise of power are due to this combinatorial calculus (Machiavelli 1961).

 11

Yet, it is equally important to emphasize that fear and glory are socially aroused feelings,
which as such, or what Talcott Parsons (1977, p. 218-9) calls affects, are able to address,
fuel, and organize social solidarity, which would be difficult to achieve through an intellect
that is more disjunctive than collective. Here again, arbitrariness is helpful if not
indispensable because it ensures that such solidarity has nothing but itself to draw upon, thus
making it an even more forceful, if volatile force.

V.
Max Weber's (1978) distinction between traditional, legally rational (or was it rationally
legal?), and charismatic authority (Herrschaft) comes in handy since it orders and exchanges
rule and anarchy in markedly different ways without giving up control by glory and fear.
Traditional authority freezes any anarchy into states legitimated by heritage, insists on fear
being the same as that experienced by ancestors and future progeny, and takes glory in the
fact that no alternative to its rule ever imposed itself. A legally rational authority knows
anarchy on the level of contingencies its bureaucracies produce and deal with internally
(hierarchy of offices) and externally (variety of circumstances), produces fear of any state of
disorder that goes beyond the contingencies dealt with by its bureaucracies, and glorifies the
ability of its governments to positively change both its legal apparatus and its visions of
purpose and means in accordance to changing situations. And charismatic authority answers
the perceived anarchy of a situation by bundling all arbitrariness in just one person (and that
persons clique, usually), summing up all fear as indicating a situation that only a single
person can deal with adequately, rewarding that person with glorification, which can at any
time turn into the vilification of a rogue (Girard 1986).
The arbitrariness of the power exercised is never absent, because traditional authority is
marked by symbols that somehow always overstate its case, legally rational authority
explicitly urging itself to change its procedures, and charismatic authority evidently
attributing it to both apex and followers. All three authorities follow a principle Charles Sabel
(1993) has called 'studied trust' in that arbitrariness, fear, and glory are always measured
against necessary sacrifice, foreseeable reward, and actual consummatory practice, which all
mean embedding political will in economic action, and vice versa.
More generally, however, we may look at how collective decisions of any kind come
about and thus try to figure out how our social calculus of power is to be embedded in the
complex systems architecture typical of our network society. Again we refer to a helpful idea
formulated by Niklas Luhmann (2000, pp. 84-5) who defined a collective decision as a

 12

decision binding the decision maker, as well, who may or may not identical with the powers
that be. This idea is of course cutting short a rich and dangerous tradition of assuming
collectivities to be already out there embodied in some 'collective mind' or 'consciousness',
some 'deep structure' of language, religion, or culture, amounting to a calculus of how they
come about at all. The decisive moment is the application of self-constraint, so revealingly
emphasized by Jon Elster (2000) as well, which is calculated by both the individual
performing it and observers watching them with respect to the political power of generating
and binding the necessary will and with respect to the costs and benefits of the accompanying
economic action.
A collectivity (or 'control project,' Deleuze 1995; Castells 1996; Hardt/Negri 2000;
Boltanski/Chiapello 2005) comes about as soon as forms of binding one's own potential for
action are judged by others to be attractive in terms of mustering political will and organizing
economic action. Both political will and economic action count on the arbitrariness of these
decisions and the contingencies they face and produce, yet count equally on reliable fear to be
cultivated and on splendid glory to reward all sacrifices made and to shorten the deprivation
heroically accepted. The collectivity, always being about to disband due to members not
being or seeming ready to continue binding themselves, assumes a rationality of satisficing
behavior (Simon 1957) even in cases when only optimization, or behavior framed as
optimization, satisfies everybody involved. And it accepts all states that do not so severely
violate its conditions for glorification that any fear of losing its order dissipates and people
opt instead for revolt. The social calculus of these conditions has aptly been called a 'moral
economy' by Edward P. Thompson (1971).
For any complex systems studies able to receive the ideas of political economy and bring
them to bear in a cognitive science study of contemporary society, we propose to take
seriously such an emergence of collectivities (or 'control projects') implementing, and
implemented in, a power calculus of arbitrariness, glory, and fear. It may be appropriate to
describe and explain what kinds of hierarchies are observed within complex heterarchies
(Stark 2009) or what kinds of diversities are able to maintain themselves with respect to plain
complexity (Page 2011).
As it turns out, leadership concerns political will and economic action bound by the
circumstances with which both have to deal (Baecker 2009b). This is trivial. Less trivial is the
insight that leadership will always have to actively communicate the arbitrariness of its
decisions and the glory and the fear addressing its own conditions of precarious success. Most
of the time, it will not communicate this openly but latently, implicitly, subcutaneously. If it
ceased doing this, it would lose its most important resource, which is not just its own free

 13

will, but that of all of its followers as well. We should not be surprised if the complex
networks so much talked about these days (Strogatz 2001) turn out not only to be infested by
a power calculus combining glory and fear but also dependent in all aspects of their
architecture on such a power calculus. As the network is its own calculus of its own
uncertainty (White 1992), there seems to be no better way to actually never lose sight of both
the inside and the outside of the form of these networks.
The throne is not empty. Even before the king takes his seat, the throne is occupied by a
network that knows as many internal switches as switches for other networks. The throne is
marked by Scripture lying open on it. Its pages may be perused and turned at any time. Its
words, parables, and gospel will certainly be interpreted and reinterpreted, producing
commentaries on commentaries to become a medium of a reading and writing that constantly
updates itself. The form of writing (Luhmann 1992) prevails over any present that consumes
itself. The throne in fact is a relay working as a switch to organize the exploration of the
conditions of its rule and the line of succession or break by revolution to adapt itself to new
conditions. Looking at the relay, all followers discover that they are not powerless, but that
they will have to submit to very similar conditions if they wield their power to let the
kingdom switch.
The throne is not empty; it contains everything we need to know in the search for a social
calculus of power, which is basically an ecological one. The distinction between rulers and
followers first and between different levels of government and governance thereafter emerges
from a single type of operation consisting in evoking arbitrariness (Willkr) between ego and
alter ego. This means that hierarchy does not precede execution of its possibilities; the
discovery and need of arbitrariness in action and decision comes first to be followed by its
framing, domestication, and cultivation in various forms of hierarchies, heterarchies, and
networks. Which is to say that we are dealing with another form of self-similar and scalable
distinction containing its own calculus.

Acknowledgment: English language editing by Rhodes Barrett.

Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio (2011): The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and
Government, transl. Lorenzo Chiesa and Matteo Mandarini, Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Baecker, Dirk (1988): Information und Risiko in der Marktwirtschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Baecker, Dirk (ed.) (2004): Soziologie der Emotion. Soziale Systeme 10, Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius.
Baecker, Dirk (2006): Wirtschaftssoziologie, Bielefeld: transcript.
Baecker, Dirk (2007): A Note on Max Weber's Unfinished Theory of Economy and Society, in: Economic
Sociology: The European Electronic Newsletter 8, 2, pp. 27-30.

 14

Baecker, Dirk (2009a): The Power to Rule the World, in: Gralf-Peter Calliess, Andreas Fischer-Lescano, Dan
Wielsch and Peer Zumbansen (eds.), Soziologische Jurisprudenz: Festschrift fr Gunther Teubner zum
65. Geburtstag, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009, pp. 673-686.
Baecker, Dirk (2009b): Die Sache mit der Fhrung, Wien: Picus.
Boltanski, Luc, and ve Chiapello (2005): The New Spirit of Capitalism, transl. Gregory Elliott, London: Verso.
Burford, Alison (1996): Book Review: Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary, in:
American Journal of Philology 117, pp. 492-495.
Castells, Manuel (1996): The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell.
Crozier, Michel, and Erhard Friedberg (1980): Actors and Systems: The Politics of Collective Action, transl.
Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: Chicago UP.
Darwin, Charles (2005): The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Reprint Stilwell, KS:
Digireads.com Publ.
Deleuze, Gilles (1995): Negotiations, 1972-1999, New York: Columbia UP.
Derrida, Jacques (1988), Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion, in: Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc, ed. Gerald
Graff, transl. Jeffrey Mehlman and Samuel Weber, Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, pp. 111-160.
Douglas, Mary (1982): In the Active Voice, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Durkheim, mile (1998): De la division du travail social, Paris: PUF (translated as The Division of Labor in
Society by E. D. Halls, introd. Lewis A. Coser, New York: Free Press, 1984).
Elster, Jon (2000): Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints, Cambridge:
Cambridge UP.
Girard, Ren (1986): The Scapegoat, transl. Yvonne Freccero, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri (2000): Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. (1957): The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP.
Laclau, Ernesto (1994): Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics? In: Jeffrey Weeks (ed.), The Lesser Evil
and the Greater Good: The Theory and Politics of Social Diversity, London: River Orams Press, pp. 167178.
Luhmann, Niklas (1970): Wirtschaft als soziales System, in: Niklas Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklrung:
Aufstze zur Theorie sozialer Systeme, vol. 1, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 204-231.
Luhmann, Niklas (1979): Trust and Power, introd. Gianfranco Poggi, London: Chichester.
Luhmann, Niklas (1997): Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (transl. by Rhodes
Barrett forthcoming with Stanford UP).
Luhmann, Niklas (1988): Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, Niklas (1992): The Form of Writing, in: Stanford Literature Review 9, pp. 25-42.
Luhmann, Niklas (2000): Die Politik der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Machivalli, Niccol (1961): The Prince, transl. George Bull, London: Penguin.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964): Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Menger, Carl (1968): Grundstze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (1871). Gesammelte Werke, ed F. A. Hayek, vol. 1,
2nd ed., Tbingen: Mohr.
Ong, Walter J., SJ (1982): Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London: Routledge.
Page, Scott E. (2011): Diversity and Complexity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.
Parsons, Talcott (1977): Social Structure and the Symbolic Media of Interchange, in: Talcott Parsons, Social
Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory, New York: Free Press, pp. 204-228.
Paulsen, Andreas (1953): Liquiditt und Risiko in der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag
fr Sozialwissenschaften.
Rasch, William (2004): Sovereignty and its Discontents: On the Primacy of Conflict and the Structure of the
Political, London: Birkbeck Law Press.
Robbins, Lionel (1972): An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2. ed. rev. and ext.,
Reprint London: Macmillan.
Sabel, Charles (1993): Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy, in: Richard
Swedberg (ed.), Explorations in Economic Sociology, New York: Russell Sage, pp. 104-144.
Schluchter, Wolfgang (1989): "Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft" Das Ende eines Mythos, in: Johannes Wei (ed.),
Max Weber heute: Ertrge und Probleme der Forschung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 55-89.
Simon, Herbert A. (1957): Models of Man Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human
Behavior in a Social Setting, New York: Wiley.

 15

Spencer-Brown, George (1972): Laws of Form, New York: Julian.

Stark, David (2009): The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP.
Strogatz, Steven H. (2001): Exploring Complex Networks, in: Nature 410 (March 2001), pp. 268-276.
Thompson, Edward P. (1971): The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century, in: Past
and Present 50, pp. 76-136.
Von Foerster, Heinz (2003): Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, in: Heinz von Foerster, Understanding
Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, New York: Springer, pp. 287-304.
Weber, Max (1978): Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich, transl. Ephraim Fischoff et al., Reprint Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weber, Max (1981): General Economic History, transl. Frank H. Knight, Reprint New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers.
Weber, Max (1988): Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, ed. Marianne Weber, three vols., Reprint
Tbingen: Mohr.
Weber, Max (1990): Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundri der verstehenden Soziologie, Reprint Tbingen:
Mohr.
White, Harrison C. (1981): Where Do Markets Come From? In: American Journal of Sociology 87, pp. 517-547.
White, Harrison C. (1992): Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Action, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.
White, Harrison C. (2002): Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP.
Xenophon (1970): The Oeconomicus, in: Leo Strauss, Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the
Oeconomicus, with a new, literal translation of the Oeconomicus by Carnes Lord, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
UP, pp. 1-80.