Influence generalization requires centralization through significant roles or objectives

Evidence

Temporal, factual and social generalizations of this type share certain common assumptions. As a condition of the possibility of forming expectations, they postulate something distinctive and thereby a certain centralization of the system’s meaning-structure through significant themes, for example, objectives, or through significant roles. One must refer the expected influence to something which can be specified; one must be able to locate it within the system. This inevitably links up with the construction of more complex structures which we must understand as non-arbitrary imperatives on a higher level. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 739

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘significant role’ that centrality of the butler role provides in Darlington Hall is exactly what Luhmann says generalization requires — directly supports the reader’s claim that Stevens’s role-devotion is the mechanism, not merely a theme, of his ethical abdication. — connects to: Ideas gain influence only through organizational architecture and network building — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 605