Informal extra codes depend on context, milieux, trust, and history for functioning.

Evidence

Extra codes always have three characteristics which connect with one another, namely: (1) greater concreteness and dependence on context; (2) a lesser capacity for social legitimation, and so also less ‘presentability’; and, therefore, (3) for their functioning within the system, dependence, in special circumstances, on sensitivity, knowledge of the milieu, knowledge of history, trust and (!) mistrust, which are not shared in their environment. All this applies also to informal power, the emergence of which is dependent on organizational conditions of work and co-operation. Informal power can and must always carry one part of the code-functions. On this basis it can take on more functions in exceptional circumstances up to the final point at which formal power serves only as a facade justifying the decisions to its environment. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 660

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies the three defining traits of extra codes: concreteness, low legitimation/presentability, and dependence on trust and milieu knowledge.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s thesis: informal power (extra code) can escalate until formal power becomes a facade — mirrors how Darlington’s personal authority becomes the facade under which Stevens’s ethical abdication occurs.