The University of Helsinki (Finland) funded a "Polycentric Law" research project from 1992 to 1995, led by professor Lars D. Eriksson.
In 1998 the book Polycentricity: The Multiple Scenes of Law, edited by Ari Hirvonen, collected essays written by scholars involved with the project.
[4] Professor Randy Barnett, who originally wrote about "non-monopolistic" law, later used the phrase "polycentric legal order".
[5] Bruce L. Benson also uses the phrase, writing in a Cato Institute publication in 2007: "A customary system of polycentric law would appear to be much more likely to generate efficient sized jurisdictions for the various communities involved—perhaps many smaller than most nations, with others encompassing many of today’s political jurisdictions (e.g., as international commercial law does today).
[8] It proposes an understanding of how law enforcement in a stateless society could be legitimate and what the optimal substance of law without the state might be, he suggests ways in which a stateless legal order could foster the growth of a culture of freedom, and situates the project it elaborates in relation to leftist, anti-capitalist, and socialist traditions.