{"word_count": 2070, "character_count": 14542}
Walter Bartl, Christian Papilloud &#38; Audrey Terracher-Lipinski (2019)Historical Social Research 44(2)Open access :  https://www.gesis.org/en/hsr/full-text-archive/2019/442-governing-by-numbersArticles with reference to EC:Walter Bartl, Christian Papilloud &#38; Audrey Terracher-Lipinski: Governing by Numbers - Key Indicators and the Politics of Expectations.&#160;An Introduction. pp. 7-43.Abstract. In this special issue of Historical Social Research, indicators are considered epistemic devices that render the world governable by quantification. While endowed with an aura of objectivity, indicators are not neutral devices. Instead they transform the world they claim to describe. Against the backdrop of a global proliferation of indicators, we argue in favour of research that strategically focuses on the processes that lead to the institutionalisation and systematic use of key indicators in politics compared to cases in which these processes fail. This type of research strategy could enhance the accumulation of systematic knowledge as well as the relevance of social studies of quantification. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic for analysing how indicators are involved in shaping imaginations of the future following the three distinct dimensions of meaning (factual, social, temporal) as introduced by Luhmann. We also review diachronic and synchronic approaches to analysing the genesis and use of indicators in order to derive testable hypotheses about the gap between indicator design and policy use. Finally, we introduce the articles of this special issue.Laurent Thévenot: Measure for Measure: Politics of Quantifying Individuals to Govern Them, pp. 44-76.Abstract. This article compares a variety of modes of quantifying individuals to govern them. The analytical grid issues from a former research program on the Politics of Statistics that focused on one of these modes of governing by numbers, the statistical nation state, which is here included in an array of more recently developed governing numbers based on benchmarking, digital tracking, or self-quantifying. Three main operations differentiate modes of governing by numbers: measuring individuals for quantification, taking political measures accordingly to guide their behaviors, and an intermediate operation that is often less visible although situated between the two previous ones and needed to link them: evaluating the situation through a measured judgment that justifies the monitoring based on numbers. This analysis breaks down data into the sequential steps of the transformations chain of information formats needed to pass from an individual person to a governing figure. The plurality of modes of evaluation, and its reduction by quantification, is given high significance, as well as the way each mode of governing affects individuals, their identity and their possibility to critically reflect and question.Rainer Diaz-Bone: Statistical Panopticism and its Critique, pp. 77-102.Abstract. The article develops the concept of statistical panopticism, thereby combining the French approach of economics of convention (EC) and Michel Foucault’s concept of panopticism. The differences between Foucault’s original notion of panopticism and statistical panopticism are emphasized. It is argued that statistical panopticism has been made possible by the enormous growth of quantification, datafication, linking and centralization of numerical data production, data collection, and data analysis. This has been (mainly) realized by private enterprises and implemented in different social spheres but also in private situations. From the perspective of EC, quantification, big data, and statistical panopticism have to be related to the foundational conventions of data production (measurement) and data interpretation. Foucault has analyzed the neoliberal and indirect form of contemporary governance. Statistical panopticism works as a dispositive for this neoliberal form of governance. Its asymmetric and mainly invisible character is sketched. Also the critique and the deficiencies of critique of political and economic usages of numerical data and indicators are discussed. (Link to ResearchGate to download the article)Timo Walter: Formalizing the Future: How Central Banks Set Out to Govern Expectations but Ended Up (En-)Trapped in Indicators , pp. 103-130.Abstract. Modern ‘inflation targeting’ monetary policy has been one of the prototypes of future oriented modes of social coordination which in recent years have captured the sociological imagination. Modern central banking is commonly presented as achieving greater efficacy by directly managing economic expectations, in particular when contrasted with the previous heavy-handed, “hydraulic” transmission of policy objectives through systems of economic aggregates. Such empirical claims are mirrored in the theoretical distinction drawn by sociologists between the openness and efficacy of future-oriented coordination of expectations, and the more rigid coordination achieved through formal organizing and formalization. This paper uses the case of the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) transition to inflation targeting in the 1980s to show how the precision and flexibility of social coordination through expectations in fact relies on extensive formalization and rigid proceduralization. I show that the tightly coupled control relation on which inflation targeting rests is not possible without the constitutive exclusion of other modes of representing and intervening the economy achieved by this formalization. However, the price for the robust and precise reactivity that modern central banking has constructed between key indicators of inflation expectations and the interest rate set by monetary policy is a comprehensive procedural dis-embedding of monetary policy from the structure of economic activities whose path into the future it is meant to govern. The paper concludes that in order to better understand the conditions under which future-oriented modes of coordination fail or succeed, we need to study more closely the formalization of social relations on which they are founded.Ingo Bode: Let’s Count and Manage – and Forget the Rest. Understanding NumericRationalization in Human Service Provision, pp. 131-154.Abstract. In recent times, the development of Western welfare states has been strongly influenced by regulatory and managerial approaches that embody what this special issue refers to as ‘governing by numbers’. This article delineates this development by using the example of the human service industry in Germany. The analysis is embedded in a macrosociological perspective on blurring boundaries between the capitalistic (market) economy and the welfare state, arguing that a certain kind of (instrumentalist) numeric rationalization has spilled over from the former to the latter and sets limits to what is named ‘human development rationality’ within the operational core of involved organizations. Drawing on case study evidence from four different areas, it is shown in which dimensions this movement takes shape and how it fosters the crowding-out of elements inherent to this rationality. However, due to the proliferation of ever more ‘perfectionist’ expectations concerning quality issues, this crowding out provokes various provisional organizational and institutional responses. While the latter make production processes more volatile overall, there is no end of history regarding the struggle between instrumental rationality and countervailing forces within contemporary welfare states.Lisa Knoll &#38; Konstanze Senge: Public Debt Management between Discipline and Creativity. Accounting for Energy Performance Contracts in Germany , pp. 155-174.Abstract. The determination of government debt levels is a complex multilayered process subjected to constant reform. In the aftermath of the 2007-8 financial crisis, a twofold reform trend has emerged. On the one hand, the European Commission demands and supports stronger harmonization of national accounts, thereby eliminating loopholes for creative accounting practices such as public-private partnerships or swap deals, which increase government debt levels in many cases. On the other hand, the European Commission demands and supports new forms of ‘creative financing’ such as Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs), a specific form of public-private partnership designed to meet climate change investment goals. Adopting a lens of French Conventionalism, we highlight conflicts within statistic and accounting frameworks and their moral-political trajectories. We derive insights into these broader conflicts by examining the concrete case of national statistics and public sector accounting practices in the German EPC field.John Berten: Failed Indicatorisation: Defining, Comparing and Quantifying Social Policy&#160;in the ILO’s International Survey of Social Services of the Interwar Period , pp. 175-201.Abstract. Despite social policy being one of the most quantified policy fields today, there is no singular indicator or set of indicators of social policy quality or performance on the global level that is universally accepted and influential, comparable to GDP in the economy. The article analyses and explains the unsuccessful indicatorisation in the ILO’s International Survey of Social Services of the interwar years. During this first elaborate study of social policies worldwide by an international organisation, difficult issues of defining, comparing, and quantifying social policy had to be solved for the first time. Theoretically, a sociology of knowledge approach on indicatorisation is utilised that highlights how social policy was questioned and evaluated. This illustrates the demanding work of comparing including a politicized knowledge production, identifying conditions and hindrances of defining and quantifying the 'social'. It is observed that different interests of participants, epistemic cultures, and practices, as well as bureaucratic procedures resulted in the mere inclusion of a provisional indicator of cost and little quantified data in the final Survey. Empirically, the article relies on an in-depth analysis of historical ILO documents.Oscar Javier Maldonado &#38; Tiago Moreira: Metrics in Global Health: Situated Differences in the Valuation of Human Life , pp. 202-224.Abstract. This paper explores the role of knowledge, standards, and metrics in global health. Our point of departure is the observation that the emergence of ‘global health’ as a domain of research, policy, and practice in the last three decades or so has coincided with an increased interest in the validation and use of measures of health, such as the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY), in monitoring and assessing health equity across territories and populations. This ‘elective affinity’ between global health and health metrics has become the focus of scholarly debate in the social sciences. In this paper, we seek to contextualise and critically discuss the different positions in this debate. We suggest that emplacing health metrics within the neo-liberal logic of health production –one where the ‘mechanisms of life’ are aligned with the maximisation of economic productivity- does not fully capture the interactive relationship between health measurement and the politics of health. Instead, we argue that this relationship has been characterised by controversy and uncertainty about how to interlock normative ideals and approaches to knowledge-making about health.Carlotta Mozzana: A Matter of Definitions: The Profiling of People in Italian Active Labour Market Policies , pp. 225-246.Abstract. The article explores the implications for public welfare policy of the current reliance on quantification tools to assess both people and programs. In this context, profiling has recently acquired a key role in active labour market policies, because it allows policy administrators to distinguish among different levels of risk in individuals approaching the labour market. After discussing the issue of the deployment of numbers in policies, I present and contextualize a recent case study: a national profiling system adopted in Italy in fulfilment of Youth Guarantee, a European public policy whose aim is to support young people entering the labour market via dedicated services. In the second part of the article, I outline how the profiling system was devised and how it works, going on to report a qualitative study on the implications of using the Disadvantage Index - the core of the profiling model – and how it was modified after an initial test phase. The research findings suggest that, in contradiction with the Index’ original goals, it has ended up screening out the more disadvantaged NEETs, with the risk of perpetuating their disadvantage. In the conclusions section, I return to the role of numbers and indicators in governing public policy, as well as their contribution to the depoliticization of public action.Anne Piezunka: Struggle for Acceptance – Maintaining External School Evaluation as an Institution in Germany , pp. 270-287.Abstract. In the educational field, evaluations based on standardised indicators play a major role in the determination of evidence-based regulations. To have an effect within a policy field, evaluations based on standardised indicators have to become institutionalised. Nevertheless, very little is known about the strategies that actors apply to institutionalise their procedure and whether these strategies are successful. This paper explores the strategies that German school inspectorates use to maintain external evaluations based on standardised indicators as an institution. The paper draws on educational governance research and institutional work. By conducting expert interviews with staff members of school inspectorates, I show which strategies are used to increase the acceptance by school representatives. Two strategies can be identified: school inspectors try to make less judgements and focus on descriptions of what they have observed (strategy I), and school inspectors give school representatives a greater say when formulating expectations for schools (strategy II). From a governance perspective, these strategies mean that school representatives are perceived as equal partners. They also imply that school representatives do not have to give up any of their autonomy, which is also a necessary condition for the institutionalisation of school inspections.Link to the review