An outline of the approach of the four years-collaborative research project International Cooperation in the Social Sciences and Humanities (INTERCO-SSH) from which the book has emanated. The focus is on the changing institutional infrastructures of the social and human sciences since 1945 in eight countries of Europe and beyond. While arguing that the organizational structures of scholarly disciplines allow a more rewarding analysis than studying ideas directly, the heuristically most productive implication of the institutional perspective appears to be its openness to international and interdisciplinary comparisons. After establishing in some detail the semantic scope of the key concepts "discipline" and "institutionalization", the authors present the research design and selected data upon which the following chapters rest.