The Swedish case in a globalized context; This paper address governance by performances in Higher Education Institutions by discussing two strategies for assessing research quality, PeerReview systems and systems of performance indicators. While systems of performance indicators are of later date and has its origin in newer forms of governance, it has nevertheless usually been discussed as a system that operates on the same rationalities as the Peer-review system. Research excellence is for example still considered based on principles and norms such as those of originality and rigour, only translated into quantified figures. However, the translation of values between the two system is, we will argue, far from neutral and its significance has more to do with governance than with values per se, and, as we will argue, changes in governance includes the governance of peers. This will be the radical difference. We will here refer to the history of reviews of educational research in Sweden and to a context of changing research policies in a higher education and research system (Parliament bill 2012/13:30) that is based on increased competition of research funds. This we will put into the context of higher education and research as a system of different higher education institutions, such as university colleges and universities with large research funds.