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The New Politics of Numbers

Utopia, Evidence and Democracy

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  • Open Access
  • © 2022

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Overview

Editors:
  1. Andrea Mennicken

    1. Department of Accounting and Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

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  2. Robert Salais

    1. Institutions et dynamiques historiques de l’économie et de la Socièté (IDHES), École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

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  • This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
  • Scrutinizes the relationships between quantification, administrative capacity, and democracy across different policy sectors and countries
  • Offers unique cross-national and cross-sectoral insight
  • Covers how managerialist ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted and how they have come to matter

Part of the book series: Executive Politics and Governance (EXPOLGOV)

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxvii
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  2. The New Politics of Numbers: An Introduction

    • Andrea Mennicken, Robert Salais
    Pages 1-42Open Access
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  5. Voicing for Democracy

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 305-305
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    2. Quantification = Economization? Numbers, Ratings and Rankings in the Prison Service of England and Wales

      • Andrei Guter-Sandu, Andrea Mennicken
      Pages 307-336Open Access
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    3. The Shifting Legitimacies of Price Measurements: Official Statistics and the Quantification of Pwofitasyon in the 2009 Social Struggle in Guadeloupe

      • Boris Samuel
      Pages 337-377Open Access
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    4. “La donnée n’est pas un donné”: Statistics, Quantification and Democratic Choice

      • Robert Salais
      Pages 379-415Open Access
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    5. Free from Numbers? The Politics of Qualitative Sociology in the U.S. Since 1945

      • Emmanuel Didier
      Pages 417-463Open Access
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    6. Afterword: Quantifying, Mediating and Intervening: The R Number and the Politics of Health in the Twenty-First Century

      • Peter Miller
      Pages 465-476Open Access
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  6. Back Matter

    Pages 477-497
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Keywords

About this book

This open access book offers unique insight into how and where ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted, and how they have come to matter. Rather than asking what quantification is, New Politics of Numbers explores what quantification does, its manifold consequences in multiple domains. It scrutinizes the power of numbers in terms of the changing relations between numbers and democracy, the politics of evidence, and dreams and schemes of bettering society. The book engages Foucault inspired studies of quantification and the economics of convention in a critical dialogue. In so doing, it provides a rich account of the plurality of possible ways in which numbers have come to govern, highlighting not only their disciplinary effects, but also the collective mobilization capacities quantification can offer. This book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as policymakers interested in the opportunitiesand pitfalls of governance by numbers.

Reviews

“Numbers, though often taken to be dull and predictable, are foci of power and contestation, never more so than in our own time.  Sober and austere in appearance, in use they often surprise us. The papers in this collection display some of the many dimensions of numbers in action, from planning to neutralize economic disorder to reshaping of governments to mimic private markets.  If numbers sometimes really have become dull, reliable, and routine, they may suddenly be transformed into vital springs of protest and activism.  Democracy and bureaucracy alike are practically unthinkable without data banks of numbers.  Although a total history of numbers and their uses is impossible, these essays provide at least an illuminating sample of their multifarious functions and failings in the contemporary world. And, against all expectations, the stories can be enthralling.” (Theodore M. Porter, Department of History, UCLA. Author of Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life)

 

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Accounting and Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Andrea Mennicken

  • Institutions et dynamiques historiques de l’économie et de la Socièté (IDHES), École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Robert Salais

About the editors

Andrea Mennicken is Associate Professor of Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, and Co-Director of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (LSE), UK. In 2013-2014 she was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany.

Robert Salais is Associate Researcher at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris-Saclay, France, and member of the Institutions and Historical Dynamics of the Economy and Society (IDHES) Centre, France. He was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany, in 2005-2006 and of the Nantes Institute of Advanced Studies, France, in 2011-2012


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