Governance by Indicators: The Challenges for Democracy

Demands for improving and monitoring the quality of democracy have stimulated the sophistication of data collection and management for measuring states’ performances. Yet, the production of indicators is characterised by a strong air of technicality and technocracy, while the act of measuring is rarely understood as an innate means of political and democratic change. This paper argues that measuring democracy and governance is not a passive form of representing reality. Indicators are a ‘technique of governance’ (Davis et al., 2012), and a potential instruments of democratic innovation. Through to the establishment of targets, benchmarks, and rankings, indicators clearly define the phenomena they are about to measure. They expert normative pressure on the entities and actors measured, as well on the world views of their target communities. Yet, in which way do they constitute powerful means of democratic innovation? Contemporary measures of governance and democracy encompass a series of methodological and conceptual constraints that potentially limit their capacity to impact on the quality of democracy. To explore this argument the paper elaborates on two crucial aspects. First, in reaction to the difficulty of measuring the immeasurable, indicators define and measure democracy and governance on the basis of what is actually countable. The discourse about how best to measure has partially substituted the actual debate about democracy and governance itself. To underline this effect, the paper discusses the case of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, which often substitutes the actual discourse about corruption within the political decision-making. Second, indicators are instruments of policy-making, ‘donor serving’ instruments with an innate political use that rarely capture the outcomes or processes of governance themselves, or citizens perspectives and views. To illustrate this point the paper analyses why many measures focus on institutional inputs, but very little on political outcomes and processes.