TY  - JOUR
TI  - Paradoxes of the Soviet-Chinese and Liberal-Democratic Models of Government
T2  - The Russian Sociological Review
IS  - The Russian Sociological Review
KW  - USSR
KW  - China
KW  - decision
KW  - political-administrative dichotomy
KW  - one-party state
KW  - Niklas Luhmann
AB  - The article focuses on two models of political and state formations, those of liberal-democratic and Soviet-Chinese. The use of Niklas Luhmann’s concept of decision in analyzing their systemic foundations opens a new perspective on both these models and the contemporary political process. A brief overview of the discussion on the topic of decision-making in organizations was offered, and the heuristic value of Niklas Luhmann’s concept of decision was substantiated. One of his key definitions of decision is that decision-making can be described as the transformation of uncertainty into risk. In this view, decision is seen as a function and element of the organization or organizational systems. An organization continuously makes decisions, though none solve the problem because it is based on a paradox: only those issues that are fundamentally undecidable can be decided. At the same time, each new decision is not only a response to the challenges of the surrounding world, but is contingently determined by a series of previous decisions. Therefore, one can say that the decision-making process is based on the paradox that constitutes the organization and determines its specificity and identity. The article demonstrates that the liberal-democratic model is based on the paradox of politics and administration. The Soviet-Chinese model is based on the paradox of party and state.
AU  - Rouslan Khestanov
AU  - Artyom Kosmarski
UR  - https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2023-22-3/861763748.html
PY  - 2023
SP  - 75-94
VL  - 22