Mehrkerigkeit

Mehrkerigkeit is a German term used in theoretical discussions to describe the quality or state of having multiple centers of influence, importance, or function within a system. Unlike models with a single core or center, Mehrkerigkeit implies distributed centralities that can coexist and interact, sometimes cooperatively and other times competitively. The term is a neologism that appears mainly in scholarly writings in the social sciences, humanities, and related fields.

Etymology and usage: The word is formed from mehr (more/many) and the suffix -keit, yielding a generic concept rather than a fixed notion. It is not widely attested in standard dictionaries, and its precise meaning varies by discipline and author. In each work, Mehrkerigkeit should be defined with explicit criteria for what counts as a centre and how it relates to the system as a whole.

Applications: In organizational theory and political sociology, Mehrkerigkeit describes networks or institutions with several hubs of authority or influence, supporting distributed governance and multi-centric decision making. In urban studies, it can refer to polycentric city structures with multiple cores of economic and cultural activity. In cognitive science and information networks, it signals distributed processing across several centers rather than a unitary node.

Critique and status: The concept is sometimes criticized for vagueness and a lack of standardized criteria. Proponents argue that it helps model complex contemporary systems that resist single-core explanations, while critics caution against conflating multiplicity with functional adequacy. As a result, Mehrkerigkeit remains a debated, context-dependent idea rather than a settled theoretical category. See also: Pluralismus, Dezentralisierung, Polyzentralität.