Effective, accountable institutions require a common understanding of their purpose, basic values and operating principles. The 1945 UN Charter was intended to establish a rule-based international order, based on the values and principles it enshrines, which have subsequently been elaborated in numerous declarations, statements and other documents adopted by the international community. Shared, internalized values form a crucial basis for collective international action, facilitating trust among diverse stakeholders and lightening institutional enforcement burdens. They also assist in addressing global complexity and the coordination of the vast field of actors associated with the modern, decentralized global governance landscape of diverse stakeholders, including private actors. Values and principles provide a basis for the design of “hard” obligations, as well as strong, legitimate institutions and governance processes with appropriate checks and balances. Contemporary good governance standards should be implemented at the international level, including, for example, governance quality indices based on human rights norms, principles of accountability, transparency, consultation and the rule of law. Global governance must strive to be effective, good governance, embodying high standards. Finally, this chapter sketches how a substantially reformed, values-based international governance system could work (e.g., via comprehensive UN Charter reform), operationalizing the various proposals in this book.