When Elinor Ostrom Meets Herbert A. Simon: The Sciences of the Artificial as a Methodological Guide "To Deal with Complexity"

In this paper, we aim to shed new light on the methodology that Elinor Ostrom used to study real institutional situations by analyzing the specific theoretical influences that led her to mobilize the notion of complexity. We show the hitherto neglected decisive influence on her work of the "sciences of the artificial", a term coined by the political scientist, economist and precursor of systems thinking, Herbert A. Simon. On several occasions, Ostrom described Simon's book The Sciences of the Artificial as the precursor of a new methodology upon which she relied to understand the most complex system of all: human society. We thus demonstrate that the systems-engineering approach, in particular as established by Simon, played a greater role in Ostrom's work than is usually assumed. This way, we expect to provide a more precise understanding of the notion of complexity she used and the methodological choices that resulted from it. In so doing, we also illustrate how an interdisciplinary approach based on the notion of complexity can concretely be used in institutional economics