Abstract. The conditions under which a formal system for reasoning about structural specifications, built over one logical system could be reused for reasoning about structured specifications built over another logical system are formulated and studied. Following Goguen and Burstall, the notion of a logical system is formalized as an institution and extended to a D-institution. A new function between classes of specifications, inspired by a similar function from [HST 94], is defined as a natural extension of institution representations to structured specifications.