[en] The following is mostly an elaboration of the comments the author made during the discussion stimulated by the McGinnis-Ostrom paper (McG-O hereinafter). It will be seen that I have added references to other papers by these two authors, kindly made available to me after the conference. He had been ignorant of this literature, and we are am grateful both to the authors and to the organizers of the conference for so broadening my horizons. MacNeil et al. (1991, p. 220, as cited on p. 1 of McG-O) states that the design of appropriate institutions is on the Rio open-quotes Earth Summitclose quotes agenda: open-quotes the heads of state ... will be asked to ... (4) initiate major reforms of open-quote international institutions to enable nations to manage global interdependence and to implement Agenda 21 as well as the conventions