Page 379 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS169 Gaby U.
of indicators, indices, composite indicators, scoreboards (ecc.), they are key
instruments to quantify, qualify and compare complex processes, structures
and situations in order to assess the performance of nations and human well-
being. As such, they are essential means of collective political action.
The connection between statistics and politics materialises the essential
feature of ‘governing by knowing’ in 21 century evidence-based decision-
st
making. Data and factual evidence ‘stand in for’ abstract concepts and realities
to make them measurable. Hence, quantification and categorisation through
indicators and scoreboards define meaning and are neither merely technical
nor normatively neutral: they create reality, impact on behaviour, and define
and change paradigms, ideas, and relationships between actors. The
normativity of measuring defines social reality that is subject to state
regulation and policy-making (Bhuta, Malito, and Umbach 2018).
In this understanding, data and statistics are an essential parts of evidence-
based policy-making and have fundamental ‘knowledge and governance
effects’ within the political process: systemic conditions alter (participation and
network governance develop); ‘data cultures’ emerge (new avalanche of
indicators); new forms of knowledge become relevant and accepted (‘post-
metrological trends’); and statistics turn into advocacy and policy tools that
perform new qualitative functions in politics.
From such multiple impact also stem the instrumental limits of statistics
and factual evidence as policy tools. Central questions in this context centre
on the ‘rhetoric-reality gap’ and the ‘means-ends dilemma’ of the embedment
of political interests in measurable scales. Difficulties of common
understandings; the life-cycle of paradigms as well as the resulting ‘ecology of
indicators’ and ‘data cultures’ are to be scrutinised thoroughly as is the
criticism on the one-size-fits-all character and the politicisation of data in
politics.
The metamorphosis of data evidence into policy tools finally also affects the
genuine work of data providers. The use of data in EBPM is subject to the
principles of legitimacy, transparency and accountability, but also of preference
building and negotiation. Data therefore become subject to public discourse,
scrutiny and contestation that target the narratives and power structures that
emerge from and result in their production and use. The use of data
consequently fosters participatory structures, co-creation and epistemic
community building around data communities that perceive their evidence as
opportunity structure for the normative framing of policy content. These
developments have immediate impact on political institutions and their capacity
to select, evaluate and process data, which is directly influenced by difficulties
to develop common understandings of complex social phenomena and by the
inevitable trend towards oversimplification of such complexity. In this way,
statistics become part of the knowledge and evidence production process itself

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