The evolving patterns of authority in the higher education systems of countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are reviewed. Attention is directed to the major characteristics of the traditional patterns of authority, pressures for changed experiences during the transformation from elite to mass institutions, the process of reform, and the contents of reform at both the central level and within institutions. The following five traditional, modes of governance are briefly examined: The Continental or European mode, the British mode, the American mode, the Japanese mode, and the Yugoslavian mode. Pressures for change with respect to higher education governance include: the growth of higher education, the need for coordination of the larger higher education enterprise, the impact of student unrest and demands, the change in status of intermediate and junior teaching staff, and broader social and policy trends, including efforts to boost regional and local self-governance. All OECD countries have strengthened their central capacity for policy analysis and coordination in higher education in recent decades. In all OECD countries higher education now occupies a more prominent role on the political agenda than before the period of explosive growth in the 1950s and 1960s, and there has been a trend toward participative forms of governance within institutions. Additionally, bureaucracy increased in higher education, probably because of size and of multiplication of purposes. A summary of Working Group Three's discussion of institutional autonomy, participation, and decision-making is appended, along with a bibliography. (SW)