ABSTRACT
Common to conventional theories in sociology, law and political science lies the question of how order may come about in a system with no central authority. We are, in other words, confronted with some version of the well-known Hobbesian dogma that for order to exist you need a hierarchical coercive structure to keep it all in awe: 'where there is no common power, there is no law' (Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13. Here cited from Bull 1977: 129). Implicit in this assertion is that it becomes close to impossible to conceive of systems where several authoritative orders 'rule' at the same time or where competencies are overlapping and perhaps even difficult to locate. You either have law or no law – order or anarchy.
