Research project
Navigating the Era of Indicators (Navigator)
The Era of Indicators
Country performance indicators (CPIs) evaluate and rank countries on an ever expanding array of standards and metrics. From the level of corruption to gender equality, one would need to be living on the moon to escape their gaze.
Whether democracy is rising or declining, whether states are meeting their Paris Agreement targets and Sustainable Development Goals – when global policy makers are determining who to blame, shame, or acclaim and allocating resources to improve performance, they increasingly turn to CPIs. In this way, CPIs constitute the epistemic infrastructure of the international order: providing the evidence for evidence-based policymaking. Indeed, 100s of CPIs exist in the world today, dozens in most major policy fields.
Figur 1. Fremveksten av CPI-er over ulike politikkområder
At a first glance, this era of indicators promises a revolution: armed with ever improving data, policymakers can better allocate scarce resources to address global challenges. Yet, the era of indicators generates a problem and a paradox: while each individual CPI strives to simplify complexity, an abundance of CPIs on the same issue multiplies complexity and thus generates ambiguity.
The Navigator Problematique
This paradox begets major puzzles that Navigator will address: How do private and public actors navigate policy fields populated with multiple indicators, many portending to measure the same phenomenon? How do these bodies adjust and adapt when faced with evidence that their favoured indicators suffer from major shortcomings or that their use generates unforeseen and unwanted consequences? Conversely, how do producers of indicators compete for users in increasingly crowded policy fields?
While it would be comforting to believe that users select rankings on merit and producers seek to improve their validity, provisional evidence suggests this not universally true.
Hence, Navigator will explore mechanisms and factors that may inhibit and even fatally undermine development and use of indicators within different policy fields:
- Perhaps government users are too time poor to learn
- Perhaps the media selects rankings for clickbait rather than scrutiny
- Perhaps academics prefer bad data to no data
- Perhaps dominant producers can ignore criticism without fear of deselection
- Perhaps scrutiny of indicators remains trapped in the ivory tower
The Navigator team will explore how these and other pessimistic and optimistic conjectures fare across four very different but important policy fields: education, good governance, climate policy and pandemic preparedness. Ultimately, Navigator aims to answer the question how accountable are these agents of accountability and does the era of indicators warrant governance?
Building a Navigator network: Get in touch!
Navigator aims to build an enduring research and policy network that works on problems and puzzles associated with the era of indicators in global governance. To this end, Navigator will organise panels, workshops and seminars, and develop educational materials connected to Navigator themes over the next 5 years. If you are interested in governance indicators and would like to be kept in the loop with Navigator’s activities, please do not hesitate to reach out to project leader Paul Beaumont via email.
Recent Lectures
April 29
Lecture by Paul Beaumont on "Navigating the Era of Indicators" for the International Relations program at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
June 2
Lecture by Paul Beaumont on "Navigating the Era of Indicators" at the Interact Center for Interdisciplinary Peace and Conflict Research, Freie Universität Berlin.
Project Manager
Participants
Articles
New publications
Governance by indicators and the re-politicisation of expertise
States are measured and ranked on an ever-expanding array of country performance indicators (CPIs). Such indicators are seductive because they provide actionable, accessible, and ostensibly objective information on complex phenomena to time-pressed officials and enable citizens to hold governments to account. At the same time, a sizeable body of research has explored how CPIs entail ‘black boxing’ and depoliticisation of political phenomena. This article advances our understanding of the consequences of governance by indicators by examining how CPIs generate specific forms of politicization that can undermine a given CPI’s authority over time. We contend that CPIs rely upon two different claims to authority that operate in tension with one another: i) the claim to provide expert, objective knowledge and ii) the claim to render the world more transparent and to secure democratic accountability. Analysing CPIs in the field of education, economic governance, and health and development, we theorize and empirically document how this tension leads to three distinct forms of politicisation: scrutiny from experts that politicises the value judgements embodied in a CPI; competition whereby rival CPIs contest the objectivity of knowledge of leading CPIs; and corruption, where gaming of CPIs challenges its claim to securing transparent access to social reality. While the analysis identifies multiple paths to the politicization and undermining of specific CPIs’ authority, the article elaborates why these processes tend to leave intact and even reproduce the legitimacy of CPIs as a governance technology.
Briefing: Developing Global Indicators for Climate Change Adaptation
Measuring climate adaptation progress presents several complex technical and political challenges. Ahead of the UNFCCC June Climate Meetings in Bonn (SB62), this briefing explores key considerations and challenges for developing indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation that could contribute to effective and scaled-up climate adaptation action. To understand the power of global governance indicators and how to use them judiciously, it is necessary to understand what indicators are and how they are produced. Different kinds of indicators--such as counts, ratios, or composites--can influence policy making and governance processes through a variety of mechanisms. Outcomes on the GGA indicators at COP30 present a unique opportunity for climate adaptation and other related matters to build on work conducted by both negotiators and experts as well as multiple stakeholders and presents the potential to identify measurable approaches for adaptation action. It is important to ensure that the finalised indicators are applicable across different contexts, are not detrimental to developing countries where climate action is most needed and are applied for ensuring the goals of the Paris Agreement are met, and means of implementation are scaled up and accessed for adaptation action. Therefore, the selection of the final indicators needs to take into consideration general approaches to indicator development, especially their applicability in country-specific contexts and their relevance to adaptation.