Approaches from new institutional economics (NIE) have made significant and extensive contributions to the natural resource and water management literature (e.g., Hagedorn et al. 2002; Bougherara et al.2009), and frameworks for institutional analysis (Ostrom 2005) and analysis of the governance of socio-ecological systems (Folke et al. 2005; Ostrom 2007, 2009) assume that insights can be generalised beyond single case studies ona higher level of abstraction. While the above-mentioned assumption of complexity limits the generalisable conclusions from any particular study about which institutions lead to which outcomes, the accumulation of evidence has led to conclusions about general characteristics of social-ecological systems that can be related to desirable outcomes. Examples of such generalised insights are the "8 design principles for sustainable resource management" (Ostrom et al. 1999), "principles of adaptive governance" (Dietz et al. 2003), or "institutional prescriptions for adaptive water governance" (Huitema et al. 2009). These principles are, however, intentionally left very abstract and thus difficult to make operational and verify empirically across differing contexts. Thus, in relation to adaptation, these prescriptions provide input regarding institutional attributes that enhance the adaptive capacity of actors faced with climate risks. These general prescriptions need to be supplemented by contextual knowledge when implementing adaptation interventions. The fact that the prescriptions remain general and require contextualisation differentiates the approach from that of policy design which assumes that outcomes can be predicted ex ante.