This study examines the political forces that have driven the development of performance funding in some states but not others. This study found that many of the actors and motives cited by the prevailing perspective operated in the six states, including state legislators, governors, and business people pursuing performance funding in the name of greater effectiveness and efficiency for higher education. However, the prevailing perspective misses the key advocacy role of state higher education coordinating boards and individual higher education institutions that pursued performance funding to secure new funds in an era of greater tax resistance and criticism of the effectiveness and efficiency of higher education.