This paper analyzed the trio of governance, local institutions and local governance from conceptual perspectives. It specified the analytic features of governance and local institutions, as well as their conceptual reflections on local governance. Specifically, this paper provides a set of instructions and the ordering of governance, local institutions as well as local governance in social sciences debates. In general, the granularity of these concepts is governed by the needs of the writers/researchers. However, this conceptual analysis has specified them in such a degree of details that displays the interconnections and differences between them. Nonetheless, it does not formalize them in a conceptual framework; rather it simply states the set of instructions for using them as concepts and the kind of problem motivating their applications, as well as a well-known piece of philosophical research.