Polycentric Orders and the Governance of Public Economies

This paper provides a working definition of polycentric orders as a governance system that allows overlapping jurisdictions and a certain degree of autonomy to consumers of public goods. The definition clarifies that polycentricity is not a static but rather a dynamic property of polycentric orders that enables spontaneous governance changes. The paper also relates the concept of polycentricity to other organizational literatures in economics and sociology, and notes the similarity between empirical studies of polycentricity and modern social network analysis.