Can governance be changed by human agency? The answer to this central policy question has been taken for granted in the last twenty years as good governance promotion began to feature as a top priority of every international donor organization. Despite this fact, the answer is not as simple. In this introductory study the answer is divided in two parts. The first question pertains to whether governance—as defined in the framework of this project as a set of institutions determining who gets what in a given society—evolves at all, other than incrementally, in the absence of radical intervening factors (e.g., war, military occupation or natural disaster). The second part questions, where such natural evolution can be observed with some certainty, is it intentional human agency which brings the change about. The objective of this trend analysis report is to answer the first part of the question and identify cases of evolution.