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This panel was convened at 9:00 a.m., Friday, March 30, by its moderator, Benedict Kingsbury of New York University School of Law, who introduced the panelists: Juan Carlos Botero of the World Justice Project; Sophie Pouget of the World Bank; Margaret Satterthwaite of New York University School of Law; and Rene Urueña of the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
Introductory Remarks by Benedict Kingsbury*
Indicators are increasingly important in global governance. They are one element of ''governance by information,'' and one expression of the growing importance of numerically expressed data and statistics in governance.1 What are indicators, and what do they have to do with international law? These brief introductory remarks address these two questions.
What Are Indicators?
Indicators are not sharply different in nature and significance from other forms of quantification or other modes for simplifying and expressing data. Nonetheless, indicators have a cluster of features which, in aggregate, make special consideration of them useful. For purposes of inquiry into indicators as an important emerging technology in the practice of global governance, Davis, Kingsbury, and Merry define indicators in the following way:
An indicator is a named collection of rank-ordered data that purports to represent the past or projected performance of different units. The data are generated through a process that simplifies raw data about a complex social phenomenon. The data, in this simplified and processed form, are capable of being used to compare particular units of analysis (such as countries or institutions or corporations), synchronically or over time, and to evaluate their performance by reference to one or more standards.2
This working definition subsumes indexes, rankings, and composites which aggregate different indicators, although such aggregations or ''mash-up'' compilations raise many special issues.
How Are Indicators Connected to International Law?
Indicators frequently operate as standards. Indicators typically embody (although usually only implicitly rather than explicitly) an ideal, either through an understanding of what would make a good society or a better state of affairs, or through an account of a particular problem to be overcome. Many indicators also embody a view of causation by measuring elements which contribute to realization of the ideal or to the worsening or amelioration of the problem. Indicators are distinctive in that (typically) the indicator simultaneously articulates...