Good governance is an indeterminate term used in international development literature to describe how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources. Governance is "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)". The term governance can apply to corporate, international, national, local governance or to the interactions between other sectors of society.

The concept of "good governance" often emerges as a model to compare ineffective economies or political bodies with viable economies and political bodies. The concept centers around the responsibility of governments and governing bodies to meet the needs of the masses as opposed to select groups in society. Because the governments treated in the contemporary world as most "successful" are often liberal democratic states concentrated in Europe and the Americas, those countries' institutions often set the standards by which to compare other states' institutions when talking about governance. Because the term good governance can be focused on any one form of governance, aid organizations and the authorities of developed countries often will focus the meaning of good governance to a set of requirement that conform to the organization's agenda, making "good governance" imply many different things in many different contexts.