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IPS169 Gaby U.
• Institutional capacity to select, evaluate & process data (Difficulty of
common understandings / Oversimplification of complexity:
Statistics are part of knowledge production process; Discourse &
deliberation in evidence-based processes)
• Institutional requirements to guarantee neutrality of / access to data
(Who defines what at which stage; Responsiveness statistics creation
– policy context; Multiple and strategic/value-based use to support
interests & aims)
• Instrumental limits (‘Rhetoric-Reality Gap’ , ‘Means-Ends Dilemma’,
Difficulty of common understandings / Oversimplification of
complexity / Life-cycles of paradigms: ‘Ecology of indicators’/’Data
cultures’; One-size-fits-all; ‘Post-factual’ trends; Politicisation)

4. Discussion and Conclusion
The Intentional and Unintentional Use of Indicators: Data as a Means of Politics
Statistics are key instruments to quantify, qualify and compare; as such
they are essential for collective political action (see Bhuta, Malito, and Umbach
2018). While a lot of academic reflection focusses on the micro level of data
development and statistical methods, macro level analysis of the overall
position and relevance of statistics in policy-making are essential to
understand the challenges ahead for data providers and politicians in view of
producing and using data as evidence in 21 century policy-making.
st
History informs us that the connection between knowing and governing
links statistics and politics ever since the 17 century’s rise of the early modern
th
state. As highlighted by the previous research of Malito, Umbach and Bhuta
(2018), quantification became an essential means of early modern politics
through governing by numbers based on delocalised, aggregate knowledge
about the state and its component parts. When, within the enlightened state
of the 19 century, rationality and effectiveness of government became
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categories of politics, statistical knowledge was in high demand and the
proliferation of statistics led to an ‘avalanche of printed numbers’ (Hacking
1990: 138). With this increased availability of metrics of the state and the need
to justify state intervention, measurable realities and measuring became
instrumental for collective political action. The inseparable link between
statistics and state power was born.

Indicators and Their Interaction with Policy: Data as Factual Fifth Power of
Evidence-Based Politics
Grounding decision-making in factual evidence ‘helps people make well
informed decisions about policies, programmes and projects by putting the
best available evidence at the heart of policy development and
implementation’ (Davies 2008). Such evidence-based policy-making

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