Configuring the coupling and deparadoxization of law and politics: a framework for a systems-theoretical analysis of new Latin American constitutionalism.

This article advances a systems-theoretical framework and methodology for analyzing the contingent configurations of law, politics, and the constitution in modern society. Departing from Niklas Luhmann's model of functionally differentiated, operationally closed systems, it addresses the problem of how structural coupling and deparadoxization between law and politics vary under different conditions of functional differentiation. The study adopts a theoretically oriented, reconstructive approach that integrates and critically compares existing systems-theoretical accounts, particularly those of Marcelo Neves and Aldo Mascareño. As key theoretical contribution, the article suggests six potential configurations of law, politics, and the constitution that go beyond Luhmann's well-known account of the symmetric structural coupling of law and politics through the constitution in Western liberal democracies: symmetric, asymmetric, pure, alternative, and volatile coupling, as well as dedifferentiation. The contingency from which the differences between the six distinct configurations of law, politics, and constitution can be derived is systematically situated within Luhmann's systems theory at the various levels of systemic operations, systemic self-descriptions, and system differentiation. As a key methodological contribution, the article argues that any empirical operationalization derived from this must therefore be based on research questions specific to each of the three levels and identifies different empirical data and methods required at each of these levels. These requirements are specified in the empirical context of the new Latin American constitutionalism in Bolivia and Ecuador, where the caesuras of plurinationality, the elevation of the people and the legal subjectivation of nature indicate fundamental shifts in the differentiation and coupling of law and politics.