Again, the possibility of social integration

Four steps beyond Habermas, Fuller, and Parsons

The theory of societal constitutionalism draws comparativists' attention to those sectors, industries, and organizations of any modern civil society that contain norms and institutions that are distinctively voluntaristic and procedural. It does so because only the presence of these norms and institutions can account (a) for a nonauthoritarian direction of social change under modern conditions, and also (b) for heterogeneous actors' and competing groups' possible social integration within any sector, industry, or organization. The norms and institutions whose presence cannot resolve the Weberian Dilemma, either in isolation or in combination, are: (a) purposive-rational and strategic (for example, in economic and political markets), (b) nonrational and ritualistic (for example, in religious “protected spheres”), and (c) voluntaristic but also substantively immediate rather than procedural mediations (for example, in friendships, families, and neighborhoods, and also in ethnic solidarities and cultural “protected spheres”).

Clearly, an emphasis on the importance of distinctively procedural norms and institutions informs the writings of Habermas and Fuller. Both of these theorists appreciated that only procedural norms and institutions can challenge the sovereignty of actors' subjective interests and yet credibly claim grounding against normative relativism. Neither appreciated, however, that the presence of these same norms and institutions within any sector, industry, or organization of a civil society places distinctively voluntaristic restraints on interest competition and systemic drift.