The Journal of Environmental Science & Policy will feature in early 2015 an article co-authored by Farhad Mukhtarov, Svenja Fox, Nozila Mukhamedova and Kai Wegerich. This article is an attempt to resolve the tensions between the need for institutional reform and learning in this process and the paramount importance of the policy context in determining the fate of institutional reforms. The article comes with the suggestion of an interactive institutional design, which is based on two major principles of governance — one is collaborative design a big part of which is deliberation and collaboration among stakeholders in designing and implementing institutional change; and the second is the role of policy assemblages in putting institutional reform in place, which is a creative role of assembling various bits and pieces of reforms from elsewhere (not necessarily one place) into a policy that is being produced/reformed. Examples from Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan show the failures of the present systems, some conceptual illustrations towards the end of the paper demonstrate how interactive institutional design could work. Environmental Science & Policy is one of the major journals in the field of environmental policy and sustainability with an impact factor of 3.514 and a 5-year average of 5.948. The article will appear in a Special Issue of the journal devoted to institutional design and set to appear in 2015. For the proofs of the article — please do write to the author.