Against the background of significant changes in the societal embeddedness of education and the en-suing discussion of developing adequate analytical tools for comparative studies, the present contribu-tion explores the systematic relationship between two prominent concepts, governance and govern-mentality. The argument advanced claims that the full potential of both concepts can only be realized if the discussion does not neglect the macro level – including the transnational dimension – rather than focusing primarily on the meso level as is commonly the case in the German speaking debate on edu-cational governance.