The Global Panopticon of Governance: The Measuring, Monitoring, and Disciplining of States

A recent OECD study noted that in the last fifteen years there has been “a veritable explosion in interest in the quality of “governance ” in the developing world, ” accompanied by “equally explosive growth in the use of quantitative governance indicators… ” (Arndt & Oman, 2006: 13, emphasis in original). The UNDP notes: “There is an increasing demand from developing country governments, civil society organisations and donor agencies to measure different aspects of democracy, human rights and governance. This demand has resulted in a tremendous growth in indicator sources, which are used to measure the performance of governments, the quality of public institutions, as well as people’s perceptions of various aspects of governance ” (UNDP, n.d.). There are various drivers for this phenomenon, the most recent being the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with requirements of specific indicators of recipient government performance. The MDGs are supported through Global Monitoring Reports, which include reviews of governance (Levy, 2007). The World Bank Institute estimated in 2006 that there were some 180 user-accessible sets of governance indicators, in turn made up of thousands of individual indicators. The more visible ones are well