Most approaches to modelling agent interactions tend to focus just on the mechanism: the protocol and language used for the interaction, and forget the context where that interaction takes place. We hold that although the complexity of the problem to be solved is associated to the complexity of the mechanism, modelling the mechanism alone is insufficient. We argue that an appropriate representation of the context and pragmatics associated to the interaction, as well as a practical way of enforcing the accepted interaction conventions are essential for the design of successful MAS applications. The concept of Electronic Institution is presented both as a way to reconcile mechanisms with their corresponding pragmatic and contextual aspects, and a way of extending familiar notions of mediation to MAS.
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