School leaders need a room for manoeuvre in order to be able to think and act as leaders of teaching and for learning. The latitude for manoeuvre is therefore interesting to look into. In many ways it is framed by the structures in which they strive to lead and by the external and internal expectations, both of the school and of school leadership. And it is framed by the discourses and social technologies that emerge on education, school, leadership and school leadership. The paper analyses structures in contemporary Neo-Liberal Public Management (NlPM) with its decentralisation of finance, administration and influences in polycentric states, and is also analysing dominant discourses and social technologies. Some key features are of those are a ‘back-to-basis’ discourse and a mix of decentralisation and re-centralisation of the relations between state and institution, employing both hard and soft governance Another trend, that can be seen as cognitive governance is self-steering and contracting social technologies.Empirical evidence of the arguments are found in the ‘International Successful School Principalship Project’ (ISSPP)