European higher education is no stranger to change; for the better part of two decades the sector has been included in the much broader Western and Eastern European reforms. Since the late1990s though the rate of change has accelerated to unprecedented levels, largely on the shoulders of three key developments: the Sorbonne and Bologna Declarations (1998, 1999), whose objectives are to make study programmes more compatible across European systems and the Lisbon Strategy (2000), which seeks to reform the continent’s still fragmented systems into a more powerful and more integrated, knowledge-based economy.

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But »Bologna« is not the only influence changing European higher education institutions: In many (West European) countries a series of reforms already were underway in the 1980s and many current reform initiatives have their origin in this time period. These ‘early’ reforms cover many different areas including the structure of higher education, management and control, financing, quality control and evaluation, course planning, access, student financial aid, internationalization, and teaching and assessment. The consequences of the (recent) governance reforms on performance are not yet clear. The aim of the analysis presented in the following overview is thus limited to a closer investigation of the following two issues: How and by what means have national governance frameworks changed? What are the major themes and developments? How and by what means has the autonomy of higher education institutions and professional leadership changed? What are the major themes and developments? Finally, we will reflect on the possible links between (´good´) governance arrangements and system performance.