The target paper by Elinor Ostrom in this Special Issue carries a clear message about her research agenda: be attentive to institutional diversity, be aware of the danger of ‘monoculture’ and ‘monocropping’ of rules. Although Ostrom was fully aware of the necessity to focus on relevant...

This paper focuses on how to deal with environmental problems, through the lenses of the New Institutional Economics. The emphasis is on the intertwined role of organizational solutions and their institutional settings. This is not to say that technological solutions to environmental problems...

This chapter aims to provide some answers using both theoretical considerations as well as practical illustrations at the sub sectoral levels of urban water supply and irrigation as well as at the water sector as a whole. It examines different possibilities to deal with governance issues...