  The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is a conceptual
toolbox put forward by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues in an effort to identify
and delineate the universal common variables that structure the immense variety
of human interactions. The framework identifies rules as one of the core
concepts to determine the structure of interactions, and acknowledges their
potential to steer a community towards more beneficial and socially desirable
outcomes. This work presents the first attempt to turn the IAD framework into a
computational model to allow communities of agents to formally perform what-if
analysis on a given rule configuration. To do so, we define the Action
Situation Language -- or ASL -- whose syntax is hgighly tailored to the
components of the IAD framework and that we use to write descriptions of social
interactions. ASL is complemented by a game engine that generates its semantics
as an extensive-form game. These models, then, can be analyzed with the
standard tools of game theory to predict which outcomes are being most
incentivized, and evaluated according to their socially relevant properties.
