There are important reasons to look at the phenomenon of institutional design more closely both theoretically and empirically. We do that in this paper by first exploring the phenomenon theoretically. We build on network theory to work out a conceptual scheme with which we can analyse interventions in the institutional characteristics of networks. With this conceptual scheme we analyse the institutional design interventions of the European Union in the national fishery networks. In this case we trace the influence of these interventions on the Dutch fishery network between 1990 and 2000. For that we make a detailed analysis of the changes in r
