The political slogan, Good Government, was used in English-speaking countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It even appears in the tripartite slogan of Canada: "Peace, Order, and Good Government."

Like many other political slogans, its meaning is not literal, but was constructed to express a specific partisan stance, rather than being a common phrase which acquired a more obscure meaning by public mental association. This can be seen in the realization that the opposite of good government is not bad government, but self-government.

The phrase came into existence by those political groups who abhorred the results of the expansion of the political franchise, and who wanted to get those people out of office. Examples of its use in America were by all sorts of opponents of the Tammany Hall rule of New York City and by the old Yankee political elite who opposed the transfer of power to Irish immigrants in Boston. It was used in the 1930s by those opposed to the New Deal, and later by the opponents of increased governmental size around the time of the Great Society project. Those who so use this phrase are in turn called by their own opponents "Goo-goos ".

The phrase was used by the Canadians to refer to their understanding that their British heritage (ties to the more experienced "Mother of Parliaments") would enable them to escape falling into such a condition, often called "mob rule".