Several years ago, I attended a lecture by an expert in governance who had researched the systems and processes in a large city. He discussed the city's multi-level governance structure, the collaboration between public and private agencies, and the hopeless tangle of projects and initiatives. There was no end to his descriptions of what was going on. We waited for the conclusion, which finally appeared on the last slide of his PowerPoint presentation. His diagnosis was splashed across the screen in capital letters: COMPLEXITY! The expert looked triumphantly around the hall after unveiling his ultimate finding, while the audience stared back at him somewhat dumbfounded. The simple truth is not always intrinsically convincing.

Cynicism is not appropriate here. Due to technological revolutions and globalized economic success, Western societies are so complex that many politicians and officials in government and public institutions often seem to just muddle through. As Lindblom noted in 1959, there is an enormous amount of improvisation going on.

This managerial impotence does not develop in a vacuum. It has its counterpart in a much wider area of social uncertainty. Many organizations have difficulty in defining their function, while their professional staff members are looking for normative guidance in their work. There are great aspirations and good intentions, but these are matched by insecurity and uncertainty. The question is: how does such a world without boundaries organize itself socially?

Dynamics and institutions

This book is not just about order, but actually more about ordering. The process itself is important. The relatively coherent ideological order of a great deal of the 20th century – although ranging from extreme right to extreme left – has been replaced by less collective forms. How are we to understand these new forms, which are characterized by great complexity and a plethora of moral forms? A community of people cannot do without social ordering, in terms of organization and normative direction. In the past decades, the existing order has been seriously shaken up. Not many social structures are left standing. But that is not to say that there have been no replacements. Social reality is renewing itself. The question of social order needs to be understood using different vocabularies.