The purpose of this research project is to analyze, in a systematic and comparative fashion, the emergence, spread, implementation and contestation of standards of “good governance”. Conventionally, standards have been viewed as an instrument of governance, rather than governance as a subject of standardization. In this project we are challenging this assumption. Today, we find a remarkable similarity of governance practices across state borders but also across the public-private frontier, pertaining to issues such as participation, accountability, transparency or evaluation. A range of public and private institutions are increasingly defining what “good governance” is and how the quality of governance can be measured. Standards of governance thus conceived rarely are legally binding but they can become de facto binding in manifold ways.