Page 384 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS169 Gaby U.
hence codify behaviour. Measuring is therefore not just counting, but defining
and creating ‘objective’ norms (Bhuta, Malito, and Umbach 2018). The decision
on what to measure is thus framing reality. In the same vein, deciding not to
measure social phenomena creates reality through exclusion and prioritisation.
Through active codification and categorisation, (social) phenomena become
reality. In an increasingly pluralistic world with contradicting world views,
statistics hence become inherently political.
Data used in EBPM also have governance and knowledge effects that need
to be accomodated. The ‘making of knowledge about governance is a medium
of governance’(Bhuta, Malito, and Umbach 2018, 13) and ‘knowing about
governance ... is at the same time also governance by knowing’ (Voß and
Freeman 2016, 5). Quantification is an inherently political process that defines
multiple relationships of power and dominance given that data and indicators
are instruments of governance in themselves and affect governance. They
substitute governance processes by influencing decision-making through forms
of soft power. They also re-configurate political relations and create political
priorities by influencing assessment and judgments. While their power is highly
contextual, they shape political action in new modes of governance, such as
bench-marking processes; peer review and monitoring exercises; expert
exchange; performance-based management, self-evaluation, audit cultures; and
forecasting or horizon scanning. They influence formal and informal regulatory
practices through normative frames and paradigms, technical standards, as well
as ‘shared ontologies, rationalities, models and technical standards of governing
often develop momentum as an independent force of collective ordering’ (Voß
and Freeman 2016, 5). Moreover, by ‘activism through numbers’, they function
as advocacy tools through naming-blaming-shaming exercises in order to
promote policy change (Malito, Umbach, and Bhuta 2018).
From EBPM also arise new challenges for the impact and role of statistics in
politics as systemic preconditions change and ‘truisms’ vanish (see Cairney
2016). EBPM results in the dissolution of a fixed policy cycle for the injection of
evidence. Instead of few access points for evidence injection into an assumed
closed policy cycle, policy-making is to be understood as a continuous framing
of policy narratives for which evidence is the basis. Such narratives further
develop throughout the EBPM process and evidence is therefore required at
every stage of the policy-making process. Policy-making is consequently to be
deconstructed into its component parts – actors, institutions (rules and norms),
networks, belief systems (core beliefs, ideas, paradigms), policy conditions and
events – rather than perceived as a closed cycle. Knowledge production and
injection processes need to accompany policy-making throughout the entire
process as narrative policy frameworks are not developed in linear stages. A
solid relationship and trust base between knowledge producers and users

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