Obviously, I do not know if these appropriators [who built institutions for managing their common-property resources] reached optimal solutions to their problems. I strongly doubt it. They solved their problems the way that most individuals solve difficult and complex problems: as well as they were able, given the problems involved, the information they had, the tools they had to work with, the costs of various known options, and the resources at hand. I see my task as one of learning about the structures of the problems they faced and why the rules they adopted seem to work.

— Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom