Panarchy, coined by Paul Émile de Puydt in 1860, is a form of governance that would encompass all others. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the noun as "chiefly poetic" with the meaning "a universal realm," citing an 1848 attestation by Philip James Bailey, "the starry panarchy of space". The adjective panarchic "all-ruling" has earlier attestations. In the twentieth century the term was re-coined separately by scholars in international relations to describe the notion of global governance and then by systems theorists to describe non-hierarchical organizing theories.
Freely choosing government
In his 1860 article "Panarchy" de Puydt, who also expressed support for laissez-faire economics, applied the concept to the individual's right to choose any form of government without being forced to move from their current locale. This is sometimes described as "extra-territorial" since governments often would serve non-contiguous parcels of land. De Puydt wrote: De Puydt described how such a system would be administered: De Puydt’s definition of panarchy was expanded into a political philosophy of panarchism. It has been espoused by anarchist or libertarian-leaning individuals, including especially Max Nettlau in 1909 and John Zube. Le Grand E. Day and others have used the phrase "multigovernment" to describe a similar system. Another similar idea is Functional Overlapping Competing Jurisdictions promoted by Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Reiner Eichenberger. In a 1982 research, scholar David Hart argued that it is very possible that De Puydt was a reader of the work of the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari who had already raised in 1849 the idea of "government competence" in police and judges services through private defense agencies.
Global society
James P. Sewell and Mark B. Salter in their 1995 article "Panarchy and Other Norms for Global Governance” define panarchy as “an inclusive, universal system of governance in which all may participate meaningfully." They romanticize the term by mentioning the “playful Greek god Pan of sylvan and pastoral tranquillity, overseer of forests, shepherd of shepherds and their flocks. It thus connotes an archetypal steward of biospheric well-being." David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, in their work on Netwar, which they describe as an emergent form of low intensity conflict, crime, and activism, that: "The design is a heterarchy, but also what might be termed a 'panarchy.'" Paul B. Hartzog writes in "Panarchy: Governance in the Network Age": “Panarchy is a transdisciplinary investigation into the political and cultural philosophy of ‘network culture.’ The primary fields of relevance for panarchy are world politics, political philosophy/theory, and information technology. Panarchy also draws on insights from information/communications theory, economics, sociology, networks, and complex systems." In Paul B. Hartzog's work, the term "panarchy" emerges at the intersection of three core concepts: 1) ecology and complex systems, 2) technology, and 3) politics. The "pan" of ecological thinking draws on the Greek-god Pan as a symbol for wild and unpredictable nature. The "pan" of technology refers to the Personal Area Network that merges human beings into an interconnected global social web. The "pan" of politics refers to the "inside/outside" distinction, and how, in an era of global challenges and global governance, the frame-of-reference for a global social has no outside.
Systems theory
is an interdisciplinary field of science which studies the nature and processes of complex systems of the physical and social sciences, as well as in information technology. Lance Gunderson and C. S. Holling, in their book Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature coopted the term, saying: The publisher describes the book's theory thus: In Panarchy Gunderson and Holling write:
