Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T16:35:40.278Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Governance by Other Means: Rankings as Regulatory Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2020

Judith G. Kelley Open the ORCID record for Judith G. Kelley [Opens in a new window]  and
Beth A. Simmons
Judith G. Kelley*
Affiliation:
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, U.S.A.
Beth A. Simmons
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Wharton Business School, and Penn Carey Law School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: judith.kelley@duke.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article takes the challenges of global governance and legitimacy seriously and looks at new ways in which international organizations (IOs) have attempted to ‘govern’ without explicit legal or regulatory directives. Specifically, we explore the growth of global performance indicators as a form of social control that appears to have certain advantages even as states and civil society actors push back against international regulatory authority. This article discusses the ways in which Michael Zürn's diagnosis of governance dilemmas helps to explain the rise of such ranking systems. These play into favored paradigms that give information and market performance greater social acceptance than rules, laws, and directives designed by international organizations. We discuss how and why these schemes can constitute governance systems, and some of the evidence regarding their effects on actors’ behaviors. Zürn's book provides a useful context for understanding the rise and effectiveness of Governance by Other Means: systems that ‘inform’ and provoke competition among states, shaping outcomes without directly legislating performance.

Keywords

ratings and rankingsindicatorsperformanceshamingnormssocial pressure
Type
Symposium: Authority, Legitimacy, and Contestation in Global Governance: Edited by Orfeo Fioretos and Jonas Tallberg
Information
International Theory , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 169 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2014. “Stigma Management in International Relations: Transgressive Identities, Norms, and Order in International Society.” International Organization 68 (1): 143–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arndt, Christiane. 2008. “The Politics of Governance Ratings.” International Public Management Journal 11 (3): 275–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arndt, Christiane, and Oman, Charles. 2006. Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.Google Scholar
Ashmore, Richard D, Deaux, Kay, and McLaughlin-Volpe, Tracy. 2004. “An Organizing Framework for Collective Identity: Articulation and Significance of Multidimensionality.” Psychological Bulletin 130 (1): 80–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Best, Jacqueline. 2014. Governing Failure: Provisional Expertise and the Transformation of Global Development Finance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisbee, James H, Hollyer, James R, Peter Rosendorff, B, and Vreeland, James Raymond. 2019. “The Millennium Development Goals and Education: Accountability and Substitution in Global Assessment.” International Organization 73 (3): 547–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borgatti, Stephen P, and Cross, Rob. 2003. “A Relational View of Information Seeking and Learning in Social Networks.” Management Science 49 (4): 432–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, André, Homolar, Alexandra, and Kranke, Matthias. 2018. “Bad Science: International Organizations and the Indirect Power of Global Benchmarking.” European Journal of international relations 24 (3): 514–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broome, Andre, and Quirk, Joel. 2015. “Governing the World at a Distance: The Practice of Global Benchmarking.” Review of International Studies 41 (Special Issue 05): 819–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, R Charli. 2007. “Setting the Advocacy Agenda: Theorizing Issue Emergence and Nonemergence in Transnational Advocacy Networks.” International Studies Quarterly 51 (1): 99–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, R. Charli. 2011. “Vetting the Advocacy Agenda: Network Centrality and the Paradox of Weapons Norms.” International Organization 65 (1): 69–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chwieroth, Jeffrey M. 2013. “The Silent Revolution: How the Staff Exercise Informal Governance over Imf Lending.” The Review of International Organizations 8 (2): 265–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, Adrian, and Gillanders, Robert. 2015. “Foreign Direct Investment and the Ease of Doing Business.” Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv) 151 (1): 103–26.Google Scholar
Dai, Xinyuan. 2005. “Why Comply? The Domestic Constituency Mechanism.” International Organization 59 (2): 363–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Kevin E, Kingsbury, Benedict, and Merry, Sally Engle. 2012. “Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance.” Law & Society Review 46 (1): 71–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Kevin E., Fisher, Angelina, Kingsbury, Benedict, and Merry, Sally Engle, eds. 2012. Governance by Indicators: Global Power through Classification and Rankings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Kevin E., Merry, Sally Engle, and Kingsbury, Benedict. 2015. The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and the Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Deitelhoff, Nicole, and Daase, Christopher. 2020. “Rule and Resistance in Global Governance.” International Theory 13 (1): 122–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Djankov, Simeon, Manraj, Darshini, McLiesh, Caralee, and Ramalho, Rita. 2005. Doing Business Indicators: Why Aggregate, and How to Do It. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Doshi, Rush, Kelley, Judith G., and Simmons, Beth A.. 2019. “The Power of Ranking: The Ease of Doing Business Indicator and Global Regulatory Behavior.” International Organization 73 (3): 611–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espeland, Wendy Nelson, and Stevens, Mitchell L. 1998. “Commensuration as a Social Process.” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1): 313–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espeland, Wendy Nelson, and Sauder, Michael. 2007. “Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds.” American Journal of Sociology 113 (1): 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honig, Dan, and Weaver, Catherine. 2019. “A Race to the Top? The Aid Transparency Index and the Social Power of Global Performance Indicators.” International Organization 73 (3): 579–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelley, Judith. 2017. Scorecard Diplomacy: Grading States to Influence Their Reputation and Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelley, Judith G, and Simmons, Beth A. 2019. “Introduction: The Power of Global Performance Indicators.” International Organization 73 (3): 491–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelley, Judith, and Simmons, Beth A.. 2015. “Politics by Number: Indicators as Social Pressure in International Relations.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 1146–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keohane, Robert O. 1982. “The Demand for International Regimes.” International Organization 36 (2): 325–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malito, Debora Valentina, Umbach, Gaby, and Bhuta, Nehal, eds. 2018. The Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masaki, Takaaki, and Parks, Bradley C. 2020. “When Do Performance Assessments Influence Policy Behavior? Micro-Evidence from the 2014 Reform Efforts Survey.” The Review of International Organizations 15 (2): 371–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCombs, Maxwell E, and Shaw, Donald L. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2): 176–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle, and Conley, John M. 2011. “Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance.” Current Anthropology 52 (S3): S83–S95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monks, James, and Ehrenberg, Ronald G.. 1999. “U.S. News & World Report's College Rankings: Why They Do Matter.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 31 (6): 42–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morse, Julia C. 2019. “Blacklists, Market Enforcement, and the Global Regime to Combat Terrorist Financing.” International Organization 73 (3): 511–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Stephen Craig. 2017. The Currency of Confidence: How Economic Beliefs Shape the Imf's Relationship with Its Borrowers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pouliot, Vincent. 2020. “Global Goverance in the Age of Epistemic Authority.” International Theory 13 (1): 144–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rieh, Soo Young. 2002. “Judgment of Information Quality and Cognitive Authority in the Web.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53 (2): 145–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schueth, Sam. 2011. “Assembling International Competitiveness: The Republic of Georgia, Usaid, and the Doing Business Project.” Economic Geography 87 (1): 51–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonsohn, Uri. 2011. “Lessons from an ‘Oops’ at Consumer Reports: Consumers Follow Experts and Ignore Invalid Information.” Journal of Marketing Research 48 (1): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, Timothy J. 2008. The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Diane. 2002. “Introduction: Global Knowledge and Advocacy Networks.” Global Networks 2 (1): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The World Bank Group. 2007. Celebrating Reform 2007. Doing Business Case Studies. Washington DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
The World Bank Group. 2008. Celebrating Reform 2008. Doing Business Case Studies. Washington DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
The World Bank Group. 2009. Celebrating Reform 2009. Doing Business Case Studies. Washington DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Wilson, Patrick. 1983. Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Zürn, Michael. 2018. A Theory of Global Governance: Authority, Legitimacy, and Contestation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar