Benedict Kingsbury

`Indigenous peoples' in international law: A constructivist approach to the Asian controversy

Over a very short period, the few decades since the early 1970s, “indigenous peoples” has been transformed from a prosaic description without much significance in international law and politics, into a concept with considerable power as a basis for group mobilization, international standard setting, transnational networks and programmatic activity of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations.

Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance

The use of indicators is a prominent feature of contemporary global governance. Indicators are produced by organizations ranging from public actors such as the World Bank or the US State Department, to NGOs such as Freedom House, to hybrid entities such as the Global Fund, to private sector political risk rating agencies. They are used to compare and rank states for purposes as varied as deciding how to allocate foreign aid or investment and whether states have complied with their treaty obligations. This article defines the concept of an “indicator,” describes how indicators have recently been used in global governance, and identifies various ways in which the use of indicators has the potential to alter the nature of global governance. Particular attention is paid to how reliance on indicators affects the authority and contestability of decisions. The United Nations Human Development Index and the World Bank Doing Business indicators are analyzed as case studies.

The quiet power of indicators : measuring governance, corruption, and rule of law

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 Rene Uruena 3. Measuring corporate accountability through global indicators Galit A. Sarfaty 4. The quest for measuring development: the role of the indicator bank Maria Angelica 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.

United Nations, divided world : the UN's roles in international relations

Introduction: The UNs Roles in a Divided World 1. The Historical Development of the UNs Role in International Security 2. The UN and International Security after the Cold War 3. The UN and the National Interests of States 4. The Role of the UN Secretary-General 5. The Good Offices Function of the UN Secretary-General 6. UN Peacekeeping and Election-Monitoring 7. The UN and Human Rights: At the End of the Beginning 8. The UN and the Problem of Economic Development 9. The UN and the Environment 10. The UN and the Development in International Law 11. The Historical Development of Efforts to Reform the UN 12. The Structure of the UN in the Post-Cold War Period Appendices, including: An Agenda for Peace:

The Quiet Power of Indicators: Introduction: The Local-Global Life of Indicators: Law, Power, and Resistance

This book is about the quiet exercise of power through indicators. With the turn to evidence-based governance, reliance on statistical data along with its synthesis into the kinds of scales, ranks, and composite indexes we refer to as indicators has become essential for policy formation and political decision making. The use of indicators in governance has expanded from economic and sector-specific quantitative data to measurement of almost every phenomenon. This book focuses on indicators of governance itself, specifically governance through law: indicators purporting to measure practices or perceptions of good governance, rule of law, corruption, regulatory quality, and related matters. This volume presents nine original case studies that investigate how leading indicators of legal governance produced with global or transnational scope or aims are created, disseminated, and used, and with what effects. The indicators studied include Freedom Houses Freedom in the World indicator, the Global Reporting Initiatives structure for measuring and reporting on corporate social responsibility, the World Justice Projects measurement of the rule of law, the Doing Business index of the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, the World Bank–supported Worldwide Governance Indicators, the World Banks Country Performance Institutional Assessment (CPIA), the Transparency International Corruption (Perceptions) index, and several indicators (including some of these) used by the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation in determining which countries are eligible to receive certain US aid funds. The underlying theoretical framework of this volume is the linkage between knowledge and power. Indicators are both a form of knowledge and a technology for governance. Like other forms of knowledge, indicators influence governance when they form the basis for political decision making, public awareness, and the terms in which problems are conceptualized and solutions imagined. Conversely, the kinds of information embodied in indicators, the forms in which they are produced and disseminated, and how they function as knowledge are all influenced by governance practices.