Page 378 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS169 Gaby U.

Of numbers and narratives : Evidence for policy-
1
st
making in the 21 century
Gaby Umbach
European University Institute, Florence/Italy

Abstract
The paper discusses key aspects of evidence-based policy-making (EBPM), of
governance and knowledge effects of statistics and of narratives in politics. It
focusses on EBPM stimuli on the creation of knowledge and on its normative
effects on defining and identifying (new) evidence. The paper also interlinks
the analysis of statistics and politics. It deals with essential elements of EBPM
and draws conclusions on its challenges for statistics and data providers. With
this focus, the paper speaks to questions of the intentional and unintentional
use of indicators and to the question to what extent indicators fulfil their
intended purpose (intended by developers, politicians, advocacy groups, etc.).
It, moreover, deals with risks of indicators and their interaction with policy
(especially aspects of EBPM and the path of indicator information to and from
policy-makers). Finally, it addresses issues of informational governance and
the conditions (legal, political, institutional) for the enhancement of
stakeholders’ confidence in statistics, data, indicators and factual evidence.
The paper is based on the author’s joint research with Debora Valentina Malito
and Nehal Bhuta for their co-edited Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global
Governance, her analyses within GlobalStat and most recent work for the
Enlightenment 2.0 project and expert group of the European Commission’s
Joint Research Centre.

Keywords
Data; evidence-based policy-making; measurement; narratives; conceptual
frameworks

1. Introduction
Data is a ‘vector of acting by knowing‘ (Bhuta, Malito, and Umbach 2018,
2
4). As data manifest approximations to social reality, they stand in dialectical
relationship with social action and are essential means for politics. In the form

1 The paper and title are based on the joint research of Bhuta, Nehal, Debora Valentina Malito, and Gaby
Umbach. 2018. ‘Introduction: Of Numbers and Narratives—Indicators in Global Governance and the Rise of
a Reflexive Indicator Culture.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance, eds. Debora
Valentina Malito, Gaby Umbach, and Nehal Bhuta. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 1–29.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62707-6_1.
2 For the purpose of reducing linguistic complexity, the terms ‘data’ and ‘statistics’ are used as proxies for
the universe of metrological instruments that count as evidence in policy-making and include measurement
tools such as indicators, indices, composite indicators, scoreboards, ecc.
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