Monitoring and sanctioning each have multiple substitutable routes, so no single institution is essential.

Evidence

At the secondary level, Ostrom identifies variables that are specific means of sanctioning and monitoring, thereby employing a substitutable relationship between levels. She describes two ways that monitoring can be accomplished: monitoring by an institutional member or monitoring by a paid agent. Clearly, these two types neither cause nor define the basic-level variable of monitoring. Analogously, the basic-level cause of sanctions can be arrived at in one of two ways: sanctions by institutional officials or sanctions by paid police. Again, the relationship is one of equifinality: institutional-official sanctions or paid-police sanctions are alternative paths to sanctions in general. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1575

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘Equifinality is why institutional design debates are mostly theater’ — argue that because monitoring can be delivered by peers or paid agents, arguments over the one correct mechanism miss the point.
• XREF: Echoes the private-arbitration and bourse literature, where courts, reputation, and private judges are alternative enforcement paths to the same outcome.