The concept of governance alerts us to the exercise of political authority beyond the nation state and compels an understanding of how other statutory actors seek to govern places within and across national territories. This paper draws on current research to substantiate claims for the insights that a geo-historical approach to comparative analysis can provide into the qualities of the political competition and its concrete outcomes within Europe. The paper begins by distinguishing the geo-historical approach from the two predominant traditions of comparative criminology, which seek either universality or uniqueness, and the preference for a critical realist method of articulation that recognizes the contextual nature of governance and its various objects of control. The paper then uses this method to identify three key foci of comparison: the predicates of governance, the multifarious objects of governing safety generated by the competition, and the variable, spatial, and temporal applications of comparison that are compelled by the power-dependent character of governing safety. Implications of adopting a geo-historical approach for both the causal and normative analysis of safety politics are discussed, with the geo-historical approach implying the rediscovery of political agency and rendering visible the ongoing struggles to govern. Notes, references