Quantitative comparisons permeate the sphere of global public policies. Although they vary in form—including indices, categorial assessments, blacklists, and hybrids—they all rate and rank actors to ultimately influence policy decisions where coercive means are lacking. This edited volume asks whether and how such global performance indicators (GPIs) can alter policies and governance practices through social pressure. It offers a persuasive framework and a set of excellent empirical chapters that systematically explore this question across an impressively wide range of GPIs, issues, and actors.
The book is composed of 13 chapters and is arranged in 5 parts. The introduction by the editors Judith G. Kelley and Beth A. Simmons highlights that GPIs are a relatively recent phenomenon and that their use grew nearly exponentially after the 1990s. Their theory of GPI power emphasizes these indicators’ ability to engage reputational concerns. GPIs are introduced as “policy tools” (p. 4) or a “technology of global governance” (p. 16) by which actors use “modern information politics to invoke reputational concerns and influence policy through the pressure of comparison” (p. 1, emphasis in original). The framework offers multiple mechanisms at three levels of politics: domestic, elite, and transnational (pp. 9–11). First, domestic audiences draw on a GPI’s focal and comparative information as well as reputation to mobilize supporters and legitimize their demands. Second, bureaucratic elites are incentivized or socialized to self-regulate their behavior. Third, rankings leverage social and material pressures by transnational third parties such as donors and investors.
Collectively, the 11 empirical chapters focus on a variety of GPI creators, mostly intergovernmental organizations (IGOs; 6 chapters) but also NGOs (3 chapters) and states (2 chapters). They span all major policy areas and address the governance of issues such as aid education, corruption, the financing of terrorism, and aid transparency. Together, they offer compelling quantitative and qualitative evidence of the paramount influence of GPIs. Most chapters highlight the importance of transnational pressure, whereas the other two pathways of influence appear to be somewhat less prevalent.
The first part examines the regulatory effects of GPIs. Rush Doshi, Kelley, and Simmons assess how the recently discontinued World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index motivated bureaucrats to reform business regulation. Julia C. Morse’s analysis of the Financial Action Task Force’s noncomplier list focuses on the mechanism of transnational market pressure and its effect on lawmakers, who are encouraged to adopt laws on terrorist financing. Helena Hede Skagerlind examines several causal mechanisms to understand how Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG 3) changed gender equality policies in 15 sub-Saharan African countries.
The second part turns to GPIs impact on normative standards. Dan Honig and Catherine Weaver consider how the inclusion of donors in the Aid Transparency Index generates normative pressure and alters donors’ transparency practices. Rie Kijima and Phillip Y. Lipscy surveyed education officials in 46 countries to understand whether and through which pathways cross-national assessments affect education policy. Faradj Koliev, Thomas Sommerer, and Jonas Tallberg examine the effect of the International Labour Organization’s reporting procedure on state compliance. Finally, Jordan Roberts and Juan Tellez explore the impact of a status as “not free” in Freedom in the World reports on diplomatic relations.
The third part switches to nonstate actors as targets of rankings. The chapter by Hyeron Jo, Brian J. Phillips, and Joshua Alley studies whether the US Foreign Terrorist Organization list affects financial flows to terrorist organizations. Ranjit Lall examines how donor rankings of IGOs affect the funding they receive.
The fourth part comprises two chapters with more skeptical findings regarding GPIs’ influence, as well as the book’s conclusion. Melissa M. Lee and Aila M. Matanock find that the prominent Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index exerts only limited influence. Although it attracts media attention, it fails to mobilize third-party material pressure or affect states’ anticorruption policies. The final empirical chapter, which is by James H. Bisbee, James R. Hollyer, B. Peter Rosendorff, and James Raymond Vreeland, explains and formalizes how GPIs generate unintended consequences. Focusing on primary and secondary education, they show how international assessments—here, the promotion of primary education by the MDGs—prompts countries to shift attention and resources away from non-assessed services. Based on the insights of the empirical chapters, the editors in the conclusion marvelously compare and synthesize the findings of the empirical chapters, exploring the multiple mechanisms across the cases. They also suggest important scope conditions: regime type, resonance of norms, and capacity.
This volume is an essential and timely addition to the existing literature on the power of IGOs, nonstate actors, or both because it emphasizes their governance tools. It relates to several important debates in international relations (IR) and is thus of interest to a broad audience. Its emphasis on social and material pressure speaks to debates on the mechanisms of global governance and the pathways to induce behavioral change. The interplay or mutual enforcement of reputational considerations, learning, competition, and material pressures echoes assumptions from rationalist and ideational IR scholarship. The inclusion of various GPI creators and intermediaries speaks to the ongoing debate on the diversification of governance actors. Its analysis of objectification and quantification points to the production of knowledge in IR, even if this aspect features least prominently in the framework and the empirical chapters. Finally, the careful consideration of various scope conditions, ranging from local values to governance structures in the target country, should be of interest to those working in area studies and comparative politics.
A core strength of the work is its mix of analytical cohesiveness with thematic and methodological breadth. Given that only one contribution finds a null effect, the book offers impressive and invaluable empirical evidence that rankings and ratings matter and become influential through mechanisms at the domestic, elite, and transnational level. The breadth of issues and actors studied makes the presented evidence particularly rich. The wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods applied across the chapters makes the findings even more convincing: the empirical chapters use new data—observational data, key informant interviews, and elite surveys—and apply a range of methods, such as media analyses, case studies, experiments, and statistical analyses. Combining the individual chapters’ insights allows for systematically exploring the multiple mechanisms and gaining insights into their scope conditions.
Yet, the book also points to several issues that deserve greater attention and should be addressed in future research. First, the chapter by Bisbee and coauthors serves as an important corrective to a volume that mainly focuses on GPIs’ intended and immediate consequences. The chapter suggests that “unintended consequences are common” but that “it is unclear whether they always subvert the implicit goals of the GPI” (p. 378). Expanding on this chapter’s findings, future research could pay more attention to both the broader unintended consequences, such as socioeconomic effects on stakeholders or the downplaying of issues not covered by a particular GPI—for instance, environmental protection—and the direct interference of the observed substitution effect in the case of other GPIs.
Second, readers may be interested in a more in-depth account of the ideological and donor-related biases inherent in several GPIs and their roles in altering the normative discourse around a subject and reproducing hierarchies among states. Several chapters briefly point to normative concerns and corresponding accountability issues, such as the lack of a GPI’s neutrality or the imposition of Western values. These observations raise doubts as to whether the power of the GPI always hinges on the credibility and expert authority of the GPI‘s creator—as the framework proposes (pp. 6–7)— and not, at least in some cases, on the instrumental value that a GPI has for politically powerful or financially mighty third parties that use it to push for the reforms they favor.
A third question pertains to the argument that GPIs rely on noncoercive means (p. 409) and that their power stems from their reputation. Whereas the elite mechanism mainly functions through learning and status concerns, many chapters show that the domestic and transnational pathways usually work through social or material pressure as induced by third-party actors—which may indeed be an instance of coercive means. Julia C. Morse, for example, argues in her chapter that “GPIs can lead transnational market actors to serve as outside enforcers” (p. 62).
Finally, the book invites a more systematic analysis of the agency of ranked actors and intermediaries. Research has documented how powerful states seek to manipulate rankings. How does this affect the credibility and power of GPIs? Relatedly, two of the mechanisms—domestic and transnational pressure—rely on third parties and their resources. These intermediaries choose whether they use GPIs to exert social or material pressure for their vision of ideal state performance. When and why do intermediaries use GPIs as a policy tool? To answer these questions, we need research that compares various rankings and their relationship to third parties.
The Power of Global Performance Indicators can be recommended as essential reading for a wide range of political science audiences—particularly scholars and students interested in mainly noncoercive mechanisms to induce policy change and compliance, in the diversification of actors and more recent forms of global governance, in global knowledge production and the power of information, in the shift of authority and power in international relations—and, of course, for everyone interested in GPIs.
