However, these differences, particularly the region’s wide disparities in governmental performance, provide an illuminating context in which to examine what constitutes good governance. To many political scientists governance is not about politics. It is administration. But to grasp and keep the right to govern the state is the instrumental goal of politics. This chapter addresses this dimension of state activity. The approach adopted is that governance should be evaluated in terms of outcomes rather than form and institutional foundations. This follows from a key proposition, one adopted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), that even given the great diversity of political systems and institutional structures in the Asian region, none of them can reasonably claim to have any comparative advantage from the point of view of governance.