ABSTRACT

Institutions create stability in times of change. However, in times of ongoing volatilities and a-linearity, institutions are challenged to their core. I will introduce a flat ontology to deal with those fuzzy situations. I will build on Niklas Luhmann’s ideas of open, adaptive subsystems and will link those ideas with Bob Jessop’s relational approach of institutional (re)turns. From this, I will compare the birth of water management in the Eurodelta based on an efficient interplay between custom, private, cooperative and public law. I will show how this interplay could also serve to create institutional innovations for future challenges.