Social Theory and Practice

Volume 47, Issue 1, January 2021

Still Thin but Thicker than Thin
A Solution for Adjudicating Disputes in Polycentrism

Political institutions in a diverse social landscape struggle with what I call the ‘initial problem’ of securing universal agreement across a domain. This has led to interest in polycentric models, which devolve a polity’s governmental authority into smaller jurisdictions, eliminating the need for agreement across the polity. The three most developed polycentric models in political philosophy mistakenly assume that there will not be disagreement between jurisdictions. When such disagreement does occur—a natural byproduct of diversity—the initial problem returns when adjudicating the dispute. I propose a solution to adjudicating disputes that avoids the continual return to the initial problem.