Abstract
Higher Education (HE) Institutions in different European countries have been steered towards an increased level of quality and performance through a comparable market governance approach. Despite the comparability of the applied governance instruments, the question remains whether these also yield comparable results in different HE systems. Building on policy implementation studies, this article analyses the importance of policy preconditions for and the effects of governance instruments in three distinct HE systems (Flanders, Italy, Finland). It is concluded that goal unclarity and a lack of support are potentially detrimental for the impact of the introduced policy.