Global Knowledge Governance: Indicators, Scripts, and Imaginaries

This paper critically analyses the field development of global ranking, evolving from metrics in competitiveness, good governance, and higher education to rankings of innovation, cities, and AI. The global field of ranking involves competition between ranking producers, but also intimate sharing of normative and causal beliefs, methodology, and data. The paper demonstrates this in innovation rankings, city level measurements of competitiveness, and metrics of AI readiness that draw heavily from other indicators, hence echoing the hegemonic views and ideological undercurrents already present in the ranking field. The paper analyzes the convergence in metrics of competitiveness, innovation, and education and how this has helped to construct a global policy script of “talent competition”. The paper further argues that to become effective, numerical knowledge needs to be narrated and communicated. We see actors referring to different imaginaries of knowledge governance that are linked to grand narratives of global megatrends such as “fourth industrial revolution”, pointing to intensifying global economic competition through digitalization and innovation. Moreover, innovation and knowledge creation are tightly linked to global trend of urbanization and cities as innovation hubs. “Talents” are important in this storyline, and I argue that global knowledge governance operates on perceptions of future that are riddled with references to past.