Introduction
The use of indicators is becoming an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary global governance. Many of the indicators rank the performance of states or national societies along various dimensions. Those rankings can have material effects, particularly in situations where they are used in deciding how to allocate foreign aid or investment, or in assessing whether states have complied with their international obligations. Many of these effects have already been felt by Asian societies, organizations and governments, which are frequently ranked based on indicators produced outside the region.
Call for Papers
Submissions from both junior and senior scholars are invited on the themes such as:
- history of compilation and use of quantitative data for purposes of global governance;
- roles of indicators as a technology of global governance;
- significance of indicators in defining key concepts such as ‘rule of law’ and in defining benchmarks of success or failure;
- analysis of who produces indicators, and why, and of participation, transparency and review mechanisms;
- production and use of indicators in South East Asia and in Asia more broadly (which indicators currently count, and why, and what strategies may be pursued in the future?);
- forms of “governance by information” that serve as alternatives to indicators, including reporting requirements, disclosure requirements, impact assessments, peer reviews, investigations, formal fact-finding, and policy and performance evaluations;
- supply of and demand for indicators, and the nature and effects of competition in this area;
- relationship between information produced by global and local indicators and the associated questions of translation, adaptation and appropriation;
- magnitude and distribution of the burden of producing information for governance purposes, and effects of overloads of informational requirements;
- uses and impacts of indicators and their alternatives, including influence in national policy processes and public debate and critique;
- relationship between indicators and international law; and
- regulation of the production or use of indicators.
Case studies could be used to illustrate some of the themes and illuminate the tensions in the production and use of indicators. Possible topics for the case studies include rule of law indicators (e.g., produced by the World Justice Project), globally and locally produced measures of corruption (e.g., produced by Transparency International), indicators measuring compliance with human rights obligations (e.g., right to education indicators) and their uses in international processes such as peer-based compliance review mechanisms (e.g., the Universal Periodical Reviews before the UN Human Rights Council and the Review Mechanisms of the UN Convention Against Corruption), integrity assessment surveys (e.g., Korea, Indonesia), measures of state failure (e.g., Fund for Peace Index), trafficking-in-persons assessments (e.g., State Department Trafficking in Persons Report). This list is non-exhaustive.
Additionally, we invite papers that examine legal and regulatory relations between institutions in the same country, domestic institutions with institutions of foreign countries, and relations of domestic institutions with international (or regional) public or private institutions. We are particularly interested in the impact of inter-institutional relations on domestic administrative practices, and, conversely in the role that domestic actors play in global and foreign regimes. We invite papers that address the role of indicators in such interaction as well as those papers that discuss aspects, technologies and impacts of inter-institutional relations unrelated to indicators.
An abstract of 150 – 500 words should be sent (in .pdf or .doc format) to Angelina Fisher (FisherA@exchange.law.nyu.edu) by May 15, 2012.
Abstracts must include a statement of the issue area of the paper, as well as an indication of the major arguments to be made, a proposed title, and postal, email and telephone contacts for the author.
A selection panel will consider all abstracts received by the submission deadline, and notify applicants of paper acceptance by June 15, 2012. The submission date for full papers accepted for presentation is October 31, 2012. The final version of the paper must be no longer than 8,000 words (footnotes included) and must be sent (in .pdf or .doc format) to Angelina Fisher (FisherA@exchange.law.nyu.edu).
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