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Global public policy in a quantified world: Sustainable Development Goals as epistemic infrastructures
[The ethics of a formula: Calculating a financial-humanitarian price for water]

Author

Listed:
  • Marlee Tichenor
  • Sally E Merry
  • Sotiria Grek
  • Justyna Bandola-Gill

Abstract

Despite the multiplicity of actors, crises, and fields of action, global public policy has known one constant, that is, the ubiquity of indicators in the production of governing knowledge. This article theoretically engages with the phenomenon of hyper-quantification of global governance in the context of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), debated and introduced in 2015. Increasingly metrics—such as indicators and quantified data to monitor targets and goals—are no longer just tools of governance but rather are emblematic of the new types of political cultures, enabling an interplay of material, techno-political, and organizational structures within which (statistical) knowledge is produced, disseminated, and translated into global public policy. The paper unpacks this complexity by proposing a new theoretical approach to quantification as an “epistemic infrastructure,” which emerges across three levels: materialities (such as data and indicators), interlinkages (such as networks and communities), and paradigms (such as new ways of doing policy work). Using the lens of the “epistemic infrastructure” on the SDGs, this article and the others in this special issue analyze the ways that quantified knowledge practices—in widely varying policy arenas, scales, and geographic regions—are at the heart of the production of its global public policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Marlee Tichenor & Sally E Merry & Sotiria Grek & Justyna Bandola-Gill, 2022. "Global public policy in a quantified world: Sustainable Development Goals as epistemic infrastructures [The ethics of a formula: Calculating a financial-humanitarian price for water]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 431-444.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:41:y:2022:i:4:p:431-444.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/polsoc/puac015
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    14. John Berten, 2022. "Producing decent work indicators: contested numbers at the ILO [The analysis of sustainability indicators as socially constructed policy instruments: Benefits and challenges of ‘interactive researc," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 458-470.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kate Williams, 2022. "Hybrid knowledge production and evaluation at the World Bank [The challenge of managing boundary-spanning research activities: Experiences from the Swedish context]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 513-527.
    2. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, 2022. "When indicators fail: SPAR, the invisible measure of pandemic preparedness [Governing the world at a distance: The practice of global benchmarking]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 528-540.
    3. Magdalena Bexell, 2024. "Indicator accountability or policy shrinking? Multistakeholder partnerships in reviews of the sustainable development goals," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 15(2), pages 276-287, May.
    4. Sotiria Grek, 2022. "The education Sustainable Development Goal and the generative power of failing metrics [The Learning Metrics Task Force 2.0: Taking the Global Dialogues on Measuring Learning to the Country Level]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 445-457.
    5. Justyna Bandola-Gill, 2022. "Statistical entrepreneurs: the political work of infrastructuring the SDG indicators [The legitimacy of experts in policy: navigating technocratic and political accountability in the case of global," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 498-512.
    6. Marlee Tichenor, 2022. "Statistical capacity development and the production of epistemic infrastructures [The millennium development goals: A critique from the south]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 541-554.
    7. John Berten, 2022. "Producing decent work indicators: contested numbers at the ILO [The analysis of sustainability indicators as socially constructed policy instruments: Benefits and challenges of ‘interactive researc," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 458-470.

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