This ITN brings together Universities, think-tanks and high-level officials that all share a long-term interest in a better understanding of the functioning of institutions in the European system of Multi-level governance (MLG) and who have extensive academic and practical expertise in this field. Their interdisciplinary knowledge and experience is pooled with the main objective of improving the European career opportunities of young researchers by offering them a coherent academic training programme complemented with a professional skills training programme and by exposing them to experience on the work-floor through an internship at a think-tank or consultancy. The research focus is the rapidly-evolving field of European inter-institutional cooperation. The comprehensive study of cooperative forms of decision- and policymaking is of interest in the light of the current political and academic debate on institutional reform. Moreover it also contributes to our broader understanding of the origins, evolution and effects of institutions. Training ojectives: To instil researchers with a sound knowledge of quantitative and qualitative Research Methods and to get them acquaint to interdisciplinary research; To provide researchers with insights into Theories and Concepts of institutional cooperation; To equip young researchers with practical Skills that prepare them for the job market. Research objectives: To develop and arrive at theory-based explanations of the impact of institutional cooperation on policy-making in the widest sense; To collect a rich pool of empirical data and produce comparative evidence on conditions for and effects of cooperative governance in the EU; To derive comprehensive and comparative explanations of cooperation by adopting an inter-disciplinary approach.