Governing the world at a distance: the practice of global benchmarking

Abstract

Abstract. Benchmarking practices have rapidly diffused throughout the globe in recent years. This can be traced to their popularity amongst non-state actors, such as civil society organisations and corporate actors, as well as states and international organisations (IOs). Benchmarks serve to both 'neutralise' and 'universalise' a range of overlapping normative values and agendas, including freedom of speech, democracy, human development, environmental protection, poverty alleviation, 'modern' statehood, and 'free' markets. The proliferation of global benchmarks in these key areas amounts to a comprehensive normative vision regarding what various types of transnational actors should look like, what they should value, and how they should behave. While individual benchmarks routinely differ in terms of scope and application, they all share a common foundation, with normative values and agendas being translated into numerical representations through simplification and extrapolation, commensuration, reification, and symbolic judgements. We argue that the power of benchmarks chiefly stems from their capacity to create the appearance of authoritative expertise on the basis of forms of quantification and numerical representation. This politics of numbers paves the way for the exercise of various forms of indirect power, or 'governance at a distance', for the purposes of either status quo legitimation or political reform.

Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs: Introduction to Special Issue

“…Numerical indicators are intended to be – or are seemingly – ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’, generated by a scientific process. Yet they translate ‘what might otherwise be highly contentious normative agendas and converts them into formats that gain credibility through rhetorical claims to neutral and technocratic assessment’ (Broome and Quirk, ). But in the translation from words to numbers, choices made are based on assumptions derived from particular theories and values.…”

The Political Economy of ‘Tax Spillover’: A New Multilateral Framework

“…Many traditional numerical indicators and methods of calculation struggle to provide accurate gauges of complex global economic chains. ‘Dodgy’ contestable data repeatedly blight international measurement and evaluation processes (Broome and Quirk, 2015b, p. 829). This raises the question of how governments, international organisations, civil society and even social scientists can and should respond.…”

“…In the first section of the paper, we draw on the insight that it is common for current international benchmarks to have normative underpinnings (Broome and Quirk, 2015a, 2015b; Broome et al., ). Accordingly, our framework is minimally normative.…”

“…This is hardly a departure from how many existing international benchmarks function. Normative criteria are often projected into many existing evaluation exercises by specifying appropriate conducts, behaviours and good practices (Broome and Quirk, 2015b). Measurement systems and forms of evaluation are difficult to meaningfully separate from their underpinning political values and preferences, frequently resulting in forms of ‘norm evaluation’ (Broome et al., ; Mügge, ).…”

The IMF Record on Social Protection: Pro‐poor or Poor?

“…In the world of economic policy, definitions of key terms play an integral role in translating abstract ideas into concrete practices (Broome and Quirk, ; Clegg, ). This proves to be particularly true in relation to the social spending floors in IMF lending arrangements.…”