Institutions are vital to the sustainability of social-ecological systems, balancing individual and group interests and coordinating responses to change. Ecological decline and social conflict in many places, however, indicate that our understanding and fostering of effective institutions for natural resource management is still lacking. We assess theoretical and methodological challenges facing positivist institutional analysis, focusing on natural resource governance according to Ostrom’s social-ecological systems (SES) framework. Rather than adding more variables, progress requires a clearer, more consistent approach to selecting, defining and measuring institutional elements; stronger links between theory and empirical research; a greater focus on mechanisms and causality; and the development and application of new methods, including quantitative approaches. Strengthening the connections between theory, models, and data suggests several promising avenues for advancing institutional analysis through the study of relationships between institutional structure, process, function, context, and outcomes.

制度对于社会生态系统的可持续发展，平衡个人和团体的利益以及协调对变化的响应至关重要。但是，许多地方的生态衰退和社会冲突表明，我们仍然缺乏对自然资源管理有效机构的理解和培养。我们根据Ostrom的社会生态系统（SES）框架评估了实证主义制度分析所面临的理论和方法挑战，重点是自然资源治理。与其增加更多的变量，不如要取得进步，就需要一种更清晰，更一致的方法来选择，定义和衡量体制要素；理论与实证研究之间更紧密的联系；更加关注机制和因果关系；以及新方法的开发和应用，包括定量方法。通过研究制度结构，过程，功能，背景和结果之间的关系，加强理论，模型和数据之间的联系为推进制度分析提供了一些有希望的途径。