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Abstract: Institutional learning has been studied under different labels within different social science disciplines. In this paper, we will apply an integrated conceptual framework that starts out from a notion of boundedly rational actors. It builds on the literature on policy learning as well as on the field of organizational learning as it has been established in management science. Within this framework, institutional learning is understood as a process in which individual or collective actors acquire knowledge that leads to a change in their behavior and results in a new or amended institutional design in a given policy arena. A policy arena is constituted through a set of actors with distinct agendas and objectives in one issue area of policy making. Therefore, the empirical analysis of institutional learning processes in international policy arenas has to study the role of actors and networks in the development of the respective arena as well as the precise steps of the learning processes and the key influencing factors. This will be done in the analytical part of the paper which focuses on institutional learning in the implementation process of the access and benefit-sharing provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It will be shown that the first decade in the implementation process since the Convention''s entry into force in 1993 has demonstrated the CBD''s potential for institutional learning and that this potential is key for successful subsequent decision-making. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]