Power is code-guided communication, not a property of the power-holder.

Evidence

Perhaps the most important difference as against older theories of power is that the theory of communication media conceptualizes the phenomenon of power on the basis of a difference between the code and the communication process and is therefore not in a position to attribute power to one of the partners as a property or as a faculty. Power ‘is’ code-guided communication. Attribution of power to the power-holder is regulated in this code with wide-ranging results concerning the reinforcement of motivations to comply, responsibility, institutionalization, giving specific direction to wishes for change, etc. Although both sides are acting, whatever happens is attributed solely to the power-holder. Scientific analysis, however, should not let itself be side-tracked by rules of attribution which are contained in their object. Such rules do not cause the power-holder to be more important or, in any sense, ‘more causal’ in the formation of power than the power-subject. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 609

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Luhmann’s central redefinition of power as communication medium, distinct from traditional ‘possession’ theories — the foundational definition the reader’s thesis rests on.
• XREF: Connects to Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — here power is an institutionalized code, not personal property; the code itself guides attribution regardless of actual agents.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that scientific analysis must not absorb the attribution rules inscribed in its own object — power-holder as non-more-causal despite the code’s attribution — is a genuinely paradigm-level insight about how social theory relates to its object.