The aim of this article is to give an overview on the different meanings and directions of the concept of governance within the framework of development studies. First, the emergence of the concept of governance will be illustrated within the perspective of recent socio-economic transformations. The resulting contextualization of the conjunctural background of the current discourse on governance shall provide the ground for the following description of the concept’s general characteristics. In a second step the diverse approaches to governance will be presented, to provide the basis for an analysis concerning the potential and the problems of the concept for development studies and politics.