AUTHOR=Endut Ramze 

TITLE=Observing the political system: designing a non-normative index based on Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Political Science

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2025.1668208

DOI=10.3389/fpos.2025.1668208

ISSN=2673-3145

ABSTRACT=This article proposes the Political System Index (PSI), a non-normative framework for analysing political systems through Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. Unlike conventional democracy indices that rely on normative benchmarks, the PSI views politics as an autopoietic communication system organised around the binary code government/opposition. It identifies six analytical components—code, function, medium, programme, structural coupling, and irritation—each operationalised through empirical proxies such as legislative output, implementation rates, and responsiveness to disturbances. By employing second-order observation, the PSI examines how political systems reproduce communication, process complexity, and adapt to environmental irritations without prescriptive judgements. This approach enables equivalence-based comparisons across diverse regimes, including non-democratic and hybrid systems, revealing functional coherence beyond liberal ideals. Ultimately, the PSI offers a theoretically grounded and empirically applicable instrument for observing how political communication sustains order, adaptation, and continuity within functionally differentiated societies.