“‘Polycentric law’ refers to the overlapping and amalgamating of rules and jurisdictions, in contrast to the legislating of a monolithic legal code that denies cultural particularities. Polycentric law is not centrally planned.”[1]

In other words, there is no one uniform system that can be called polycentric, because polycentrism involves multiple centers of control competing with one another, sometimes merging, sometimes coinciding.

History has demonstrated that legal and normative orders tend to centralize. Polycentric law materializes when each of these centralized orders remains competitive, kinetic, viable, and characterized by bottom-up customs and traditions.

Pluralism inheres in polycentric orders in which the power to coerce or control is dispersed, neutralized, or offset through competition and private adjudication according to embedded cultural standards and practices.

[1] Allen Mendenhall, Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism (Lexington Books, 2014), p. 67.