A theme of recent research on governance in developed democracies is its transformation toward a greater role for civil society relative to that of governments in defining the goals of public policy and in steering public and private resources toward the achievement of those goals.  It is argued, further, that networks and other consociational arrangements are replacing bureaucracies in the governing of publicly supported service delivery. Systematic evidence for such claims is limited, however. In this paper, we employ an analytic framework which views societal governance as emanating from three sectors –proprietary firms and markets, civil society associations and organizations, and governments – and the many types of interactions among them. Using this framework, we analyze literatures published from the late 1970s through 2012 on three policy domains – immigration policy, migrant/immigrant education policy, and bilingual education policy – in the United States and in member countries of the European Union. This analysis identifies three kinds of information: the types of governance processes being employed, directions of change in the relative roles of the three sectors, and the sources of impetus for these changes. We find that the relative influence of civil society and for-profit firms on immigration policy has grown in the United States and in Europe, reflecting sector shifts from the mostly unitary power and role of governments toward engagement with civil society and the market sector. In comparison, migrant education policy remains primarily a responsibility of governments with limited or no influence of the other two sectors. Bilingual education, while mostly provided by governments, is strongly influenced by citizens, civil society, and private industries; in general, business interests exert strong sway on language education. We argue that viewing the concept of governance as a comprehensive analytic framework is a valuable tool for gaining empirical insights into whether, how and why patterns of national governance are changing. Patterns, types, and explanations for change are multifarious, a reality that transformationist narratives obscure.