ABSTRACT
Introduction Our argument in this ¿nal discussion chapter starts out from two assumptions. The ¿rst one is that the weight of the processes, mediating between a given institutional innovation affecting property rights, on the one hand, and its economic and social outcomes in different societies, on the other, is the result of the concrete social appropriations of institutional rules and norms. That is, of how, by whom and to what purposes they are actually used to legitimize the power inherent to property relations, or resistance to that power.1 The second, is that social appropriations result from historical processes engaging multiple agents, and are too deeply embedded in social contexts to be reduced to an account of the interests and actions of the state and elite organizations, important though these doubtlessly are.
