Politics of Comparative Quantification, The Case of Governance Metrics

Numbers expose problems, help to institutionalize new domains of decision-making, and make complex issues commensurable, giving them a common form. Numbers play a role in the construction of social reality; they help to politicize issues, carry policy ideas from one context to another, and serve as backbones of decision-making in politics, administration and jurisprudence. On the other hand, numbers are associated with neutrality, science and expertise, concealing their political character. The present special issue explores the relation of politics and expert knowledge in methods that quantify attributes of governance in a comparative format.