Statistical entrepreneurs: the political work of infrastructuring the SDG indicators

Abstract

Governing by indicators has emerged as the predominant mode of global public policy. Consequently, global governance has become a field in which different indicators compete for policymakers’ and public attention. This begs a question—what makes some indicators successful when others become irrelevant? This paper explores this problem through the inquiry into the measurement of multidimensional poverty in Sustainable Development Goal 1 (“End poverty in all its forms everywhere”). In the field historically dominated by the World Bank’s dollar-per-day metric (currently 1.9$), multidimensional poverty measurement gained prominence, becoming one of the key measures of global poverty. By tracking the pathways to success of multidimensional poverty measurement—through qualitative interviews with actors in International Organisations this paper argues that the key quality of successful indicators is their ability to become parts of the broader epistemic infrastructure, linking political institutions, actors (including experts and policymakers), and data and statistics. The paper brings the focus on a specific set of actors—statistical entrepreneurs—who advocate for innovations in measurement and work toward creating such infrastructures, thus indirectly promoting new policy ideas reflected in the metrics.