The politics of numbers: the normative agendas of global benchmarking

Broome, André; Quirk, Joel

doi:10.1017/s0260210515000339

Cited by 47 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…22 By this logic, private authority confers power, since actors are deferring to standards set by others. As such, it may lead to behavioral or discursive change among the governed, 23 although these outcomes are not the focus of my analysis. Critically, however, the power that private actors can achieve via making rules and setting standards does not exist in isolation.…”

Section: Private Authority In World Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Rating Freedom: Ideological Affinity, Private Authority, and the Freedom in the World Ratings

Bush¹

2017

Perspect. polit.

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TheFreedom in the World(FITW) ratings of countries’ freedom, created by Freedom House in 1972, are widely used by many U.S. audiences, including journalists, policymakers, and scholars. Why and how did these ratings acquire private authority in the United States? Furthermore, why and to what extent have they retained private authority over time and across different audiences? Contrary to previous research on private authority, which emphasizes the role of raters’ expertise and independence, I advance an argument that emphasizes the role of ideological affinity between raters and users. Specifically, I argue that ratings are more likely to have authority among actors that share raters’ ideas about concept definition and coding. I also argue that ratings are more likely to have authority among weak actors that depend on powerful other users of the ratings. Diverse evidence and methods—including data on the ratings’ usage, an internal archive of Freedom House records, interviews with key informants, and a statistical analysis of bias—support the argument.

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Section: Private Authority In World Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Rating Freedom: Ideological Affinity, Private Authority, and the Freedom in the World Ratings

Bush¹

2017

Perspect. polit.

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“…The political underpinnings of numerical tools such as indices, indicators and benchmarks have received growing attention (Broome & Quirk, 2015a, 2015bCooley & Snyder, 2015). This emerging literature underscores how indices and indicators have a governing effect on those that are being evaluated, incentivizing the individuals, companies or states that are being assessed to comply with the norms underlying those numerical representations, as better performance has positive ideational and material effects, enabling a form of 'governance from a distance' (Broome & Quirk, 2015a).…”

Section: Indices Index Providers and Private Authoritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Steering capital: the growing private authority of index providers in the age of passive asset management

Petry

Fichtner

Heemskerk

2019

Review of International Political Economy

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Since the global financial crisis, there is a massive shift of assets towards index funds. Rather than picking stocks, index funds replicate stock indices such as the S&P 500. But where do these indices actually come from? This paper analyzes the politico-economic role of index providers, a small group of highly profitable firms including MSCI, S&P DJI, and FTSE Russell, and develops a research agenda from an IPE perspective. We argue that these index providers have become actors that exercise growing private authority as they steer investments through the indices they create and maintain. While technical expertise is a precondition, their brand is the primary source of index provider authority, which is entrenched through network externalities. Rather than a purely technical exercise, constructing indices is inherently political. Which companies or countries are included into an index or excluded (i.e. receive investment in-or outflows) is based on criteria defined by index providers, thereby setting standards for corporate governance and investor access. Hence, in this new age of passive asset management index providers are becoming gatekeepers that exert de facto regulatory power and thus may have important effects on corporate governance and the economic policies of countries.

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“…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.…”

Section: The Context and Case For Tax Spillovermentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Baker

Murphy

2019

Global Policy

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Tax spillovers are the effects one country's tax rules and practices have on other countries. They have been assessed in aggregate terms by the IMF using econometric models, and were found to have a ‘significant and sizable’ impact in reducing corporate tax bases and rates in ‘developing countries. However, a widely accepted form of country level spillover analysis remains elusive, despite demands from non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) and international organisations (IOs). We present the first framework for conducting comprehensive national level spillover analyses using a qualitative evaluation framework in three steps. First we identify the importance of the normative underpinnings of multilateral evaluation frameworks. We make the case for an international moral harm convention that discourages states from doing harm to other states through their tax policies. Second we illustrate some of the difficulties in conducting country level spillover analyses using econometric methods, while advancing a broader conception of spillover, based on the defensive purpose of corporation tax. Third we present a new framework for conducting spillover analysis, that assesses relationships between four direct taxes and a number of administrative and institutional features of tax systems. Finally, we present initial pilot qualitative assessments for the UK and Denmark, involving scores, risk dashboards and visualisations.

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The politics of numbers: the normative agendas of global benchmarking

Cited by 47 publications

References 11 publications

The Politics of Rating Freedom: Ideological Affinity, Private Authority, and the Freedom in the World Ratings

The Politics of Rating Freedom: Ideological Affinity, Private Authority, and the Freedom in the World Ratings

Steering capital: the growing private authority of index providers in the age of passive asset management

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

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