This article develops the framework of programmed power to theorize how digital platform infrastructures transform the conditions under which organizational programmes operate and decisions become observable. Drawing on Luhmann's systems theory, it asks what happens to programmes as decision premises when their conditional logic is computationally instantiated under conditions rendering premises non-inspectable, thresholds non-negotiable and operations non-attributable. 1t introduces the concept of presets to capture this transformation.
The article is conceptual, extending Luhmann's theory of programmes, decision premises and functional differentiation through engagement with recent Luhmannian scholarship on algorithms and organizational decision-making. A three-way comparison among programmatic governance, conditional programme governance and preset governance is developed through an illustration of algorithmic management in gig platforms.
Programmed power operates through four cumulative mechanisms: infrastructural encoding, communicative filtering, reflexivity suppression and post-decisional closure. The article introduces opaque coupling as the mechanism through which presets constrain communicative possibility while remaining beneath the threshold of observation, and identifies a legitimacy gap between the communicative register through which platforms produce legitimacy and the infrastructural register through which they exercise governance. The EU AI Act and Digital Services Act face structural limitations when targeting preset governance.
The article specifies how computational opacity transforms programme observability, contributing a diagnostic vocabulary absent from infrastructure studies and governance-by-design accounts. Its originality lies in treating presets as transformations of programmes, not replacements for them. The concepts of presets, opaque coupling and the legitimacy gap offer analytical tools for researchers studying algorithmic governance and for policymakers seeking to restore communicative access to programme premises embedded in platform infrastructures.
