The Quiet Power of Indicators

Sally Engle Merry is Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University. She is the author and editor of nine books, including the J. Willard Hurst Prize-winning Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law (2000). Her most recent book is Governance by Indicators (2012, co-edited with Kevin Davis, Angelina Fisher and Benedict Kingsbury). Kevin E. Davis is Beller Family Professor of Business Law and Vice Dean at New York University School of Law. He has written extensively about anti-corruption law as well as the relationship between law and economic development in such journals as the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Law and Society Review, and the New York University Law Review. Benedict Kingsbury is Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law and director of the Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University School of Law. In addition to being co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law he is the editor and co-editor of over fifteen books, including International Financial Institutions and Global Legal Governance (2011).

• Introduction: the local-global life of indicators: law, power and resistance Kevin Davis, Benedict Kingsbury and Sally Engle Merry; Part I. Global Indicators of Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law: 1. International organizations and the production of indicators: the case of freedom house Christopher G. Bradley; 2. Indicators and the law: a case study of the rule of law index René Urueña; 3. Measuring corporate accountability through global indicators Galit A. Sarfaty; 4. The quest for measuring development: the role of the indicator bank María Angélica Prada Uribe; 5. Qualitative and quantitative conditionality: accountability in the EU accession and MCC processes Nikhil Dutta; Part II. Indicators in Local Contexts: 6. Rule of law indicators as a political technology of power in Romania Mihaela Serban; 7. Indicators, global expertise, and a local political drama: producing and deploying corruption perception data in postsocialist Albania Smoki Musaraj; 8. Evaluating the impact of corruption (perception) indicators on governance discourses in Kenya Migai Akech; 9. Measuring labour market efficiency: indicators that fuel an ideological war and undermine social concern and trust in the South African regulatory process Debbie Collier and Paul Benjamin; Conclusion: contesting global indicators David Nelken.