Using a power-knowledge framework, this volume critically investigates how major global indicators of legal governance are produced, disseminated and used, and to what effect. Original case studies include Freedom House's Freedom in the World indicator, the Global Reporting Initiative's structure for measuring and reporting on corporate social responsibility, the World Justice Project's measurement of the rule of law, the World Bank's Doing Business index, the World Bank-supported Worldwide Governance Indicators, the World Bank's Country Performance Institutional Assessment (CPIA), and the Transparency International Corruption (Perceptions) index. Also examined is the use of performance indicators by the European Union for accession countries and by the US Millennium Challenge Corporation in allocating US aid funds.

This highly accessible book investigates the rankings that increasingly influence perceptions of countries' governance and civil rights.

Indicators and rankings are widely used by governments and organisations to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and success of policy decisions. This book evaluates the creation of indicators, their impact on policy decisions, and the implications of their use.

We live in a world where seemingly everything can be measured. We rely on indicators to translate social phenomena into simple, quantified terms, which in turn can be used to guide individuals, organizations, and governments in establishing policy. Yet counting things requires finding a way to make them comparable. And in the process of translating the confusion of social life into neat categories, we inevitably strip it of context and meaning—and risk hiding or distorting as much as we reveal. With The Seductions of Quantification, leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry investigates the techniques by which information is gathered and analyzed in the production of global indicators on human rights, gender violence, and sex trafficking. Although such numbers convey an aura of objective truth and scientific validity, Merry argues persuasively that measurement systems constitute a form of power by incorporating theories about social change in their design but rarely explicitly acknowledging them. For instance, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries in terms of their compliance with antitrafficking activities, assumes that prosecuting traffickers as criminals is an effective corrective strategy—overlooking cultures where women and children are frequently sold by their own families. As Merry shows, indicators are indeed seductive in their promise of providing concrete knowledge about how the world works, but they are implemented most successfully when paired with context-rich qualitative accounts grounded in local knowledge.

Shows how global ratings and rankings shape political agendas and influence states' behavior, reframing how we think about power.

It pluralises the conversation around legal indicators by considering the diversity of law and legal institutions in the Global South.

一带一路是新时期中国出台的全新战略倡议，它以促进中国与相关国家互联互通和经贸合作为主导，积极推进政策沟通、货币流通和民心相通。中国提出“一带一路”倡议后，在欧洲国家，尤其的在中东欧国家引起了多元的反响，欧盟机构也对“一带一路”倡议表示了一定的关注，并期待这一倡议能够与欧盟现有的多项投资对接。