Global Knowledge Governance: Policy Scripts and Narratives

Knowledge governance and knowledge based economy have been buzz-words for the past decades, but the current ideas on global political economy are highlighting the role of knowledge and human capital in economic competitiveness and prosperity. Moreover, economic competitiveness is ideationally increasingly linked to automatization and numerical governance. There has been a rise of global indicators that are used to assess and compare the policies and institutions of countries and regions. In addition, automatization and use of algorithms is at the heart of the future visions of national economic development, with countries racing to take the full advantage of them. Global indicators bring coherence to transnational governance by providing a global policy script for countries to succeed in global economic competition. These imaginaries are also linked to grand narratives of global megatrends, pointing to intensifying global economic competition through digitalization and innovation. International organizations play a major role in promoting these narratives, though a closer analysis of the production of such global policy scripts is likely to reveal differing rationalities within these institutions. Moreover, transnational policy ideas are likely to be edited and translated in different contexts. Our paper analyses at the ideational context where the above shifts in global knowledge governance occur, focusing particularly on rationalities and historical narratives behind policy scripts.