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What is missing from the policy analyst's tool kit - and from the set of accepted, well-developed theories of human organization - is an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts.

— Elinor Ostrom

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We should continue to use simple models where they capture enough of the core underlying structure and incentives that they usefully predict outcomes. When the world we are trying to explain and improve, however, is not well described by a simple model, we must continue to improve our frameworks and theories so as to be able to understand complexity and not simply reject it.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elinor Ostrom (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.