argue that they, possibly amended with additional coordinating
controls, should form a well-functioning entirety.
The difficulty with this kind of loosening of the control structure
is that there is no assurance that the loci of control will act for the
benefit of the interconnected system. For example, there have been
accidents, which have been attributed to a race between automatic
and manual controls. Polycentric control as a concept is however
attractive, because it prima facie models how real systems are
structured. One may argue that present design methods in the control
of complex systems actually bring as a result something that
may be called polycentric control.