Health system governance: welcoming the reboot

### Summary box Though a rather recent concept, governance is as old as humanity. Over the last two decades, governance has received a lot of attention from the global health community. The governance lens has been applied to, among others, health,1 health systems,2 health system strengthening,3 health system resilience,4 primary healthcare5 and hospitals.6 Substantial knowledge and understanding have been accumulated in the process. Yet, recent reviews of frameworks have also reported a certain conceptual confusion and lack of progress with the empirical agenda.2 No framework has managed to impose itself so far. Is the health system governance research programme experiencing a stalemate? We don’t think so. Recent contributions indicate that a conceptual reboot is on its way. A number …