Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:17:29.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Conclusion: Contesting Global Indicators

from Part II - INDICATORS IN LOCAL CONTEXTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2015

David Nelken
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
Sally Engle Merry
Affiliation:
New York University
Kevin E. Davis
Affiliation:
New York University
Benedict Kingsbury
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access

Summary

We will have a kind of symbolic and secularized society based on the premise that people voluntarily conform to the decisions of authorized expert knowledge. But while order is being established, responsibility may be vanishing.

Bengt Jacobsson (2000, 40)

(T)he inequality between one who gives orders and one who must obey is not as radical as that between one who has a right to demand an answer and one who has the duty to answer.

Milan Kundera (1991, 110)

The studies in this collection, building on previous important contributions to the discussion (see especially Davis, Kingsbury, and Merry 2012a, 2012b), offer a set of rich and insightful discussions of social indicators that have potentially global implications. The focus here is on the wider relevance of those indicators that seek to compare levels of political freedom, the rule of law, corruption, good governance, and corporate responsibility. In their introduction, the editors explain what is distinctive about their approach. They tell us that most of the literature on indicators focuses on how to develop effective, reliable, and valid measures. It looks at how to conceptualize what is to be measured, how to operationalize broad and vague concepts, what data sets are available that can be used, how to label indicators so that they will be easy to understand, and how to persuade governments, donors, and other potential users of the indicator to pay for and use them. In contrast, this collection asks what difference indicators make to governance and law. It examines how indicators work in practice, why some become successful.

My task in this afterword is to reflect on what the chapters in this book tell us by way of answers to these questions. In particular I shall point to some of the difficulties of actually separating the question of explaining the causes of what they call an indicator's “success” from the search for developing more effective indicators.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Quiet Power of Indicators
Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law
, pp. 317 - 338
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akech, Migai. 2015. “Evaluating the Impact of Corruption Indicators on Governance Discourses in Kenya.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Benedict Kingsbury, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1975. The Mirror of Production. New York: Telos Press.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Claudio, Bezzi, Leonardo, Cannavà, and Maurizio, Palumbo (eds.). 2010. Costruire e usare indicatori nella ricerca sociale e nella valutazione, Rome: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Boeder, Pieter. 2005. “Habermas’ Heritage: The Future of the Public Sphere in the Network Society.” First Monday 10: 9–5. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1280/1200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, Christopher G. 2015. “International Organizations and the Production of Indicators: The Case of Freedom House.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Debbie, and Benjamin, Paul. 2015. “Measuring Labor Market Efficiency: Indicators that Fuel an Ideological War and Undermine Social Concern and Trust in the South African Regulatory Process.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Kevin E., Kingsbury, Benedict, and Merry, Sally Engle (eds.). 2012a. Governance by Indicators, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Kevin E., Kingsbury, Benedict, and Merry, Sally Engle (eds.). 2012b. “Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance.” Law and Society Review 46(1): 71–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutta, Nikhil. 2015. “Tradeoffs in Accountability: Conditionality Processes in the European Union and Millennium Challenge Corporation.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ewald, Francis. 1990. “Norms, Discipline and the Law.” Representations, No. 30, Special Issue: Law and the Order of Culture, 138–161.Google Scholar
Jacobsson, Bengt. 2000. “Standardization and Expert Knowledge.” In Brunsson, Nils and Bengt Jacobsson, eds., A World of Standards. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
King, Michael, and Thornhill, Chris. 2006. Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Politics and Law. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kundera, Milan. 1991. Immortality. New York.Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Merry, Susan Engle. 2011. “Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance.” Current Anthropology 52(Supplement 3): s83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musaraj, Smoki. 2015. “Indicators, Global Expertise, and a Local Political Drama: Producing and Deploying Corruption Perception Data in Post-Socialist Albania.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Power, Michael. 2004. The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty. London: Demos. http://www.demos.co.uk/files/riskmanagementofeverything.pdf.Google Scholar
Rosga, Ann Janette, and Satterthwaite, Margaret L.. 2009. “The Trust in Indicators: Measuring Human Rights.”Berkeley Journal of International Law, 253.Google Scholar
Rubington, Earl, and Weinberg, Martin. 2010 .The Study of Social Problems: Seven Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Santos, Alvaro, and Trubek, David M.. 2006. “The Third Moment in Law and Development Theory and the Emergence of a New Critical Practice.” In Trubek, David M. and Santos, Alvaro, eds., The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal, 1–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sarfaty, Galit A. 2015. “Measuring Corporate Accountability through Global Indicators.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Uribe, María Angélica Prada. 2015. “The Quest for Measuring Development: The Role of the Indicator Bank.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Benedict Kingsbury, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law.New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Urueña, René. 2015. “Indicators and the Law: A Case Study of the Rule of Law Index.” In Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law.New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×