Advocacy, analysis and quality. The Bermuda triangle of Statistics

One might muse that what official statistics are to the consolidation of the modern nation state, composite indicators are to the emergence of post-modernity, – meaning by this the philosophical critique of the exact science and rational knowledge programme of Descartes and Galileo. Composite indicators give voice to a plurality of different actors and normative views of post-modernity. Not only has the use of composite indicators increased dramatically over the past ten to fifteen years, but the typology of use has widened. To make a recent example of a hitherto unheard use, in 2012 Bill Emmott, former Director of The Economist, used a battery of composite indicators, with a well dramatized presentational style, to describe the decline of a country, and this in a movie seen by millions of viewers. We consider composite indicators as an object populating a multidimensional space whose main axes are advocacy, analysis and quality. We review these issues and try to offer some elements of an epistemology of composite indicators.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic