© 2016 PILAGG

March 11th – Managerial Governance and the Mathematical Turn: Legal Indicators as Performance Measures, by Prof. David Restrepo

FRIDAY 11th MARCH 2016: Prof. David Restrepo (HEC Paris)

NOTE FOR EXTERNAL GUESTS (not from Sciences Po) : Due to security measures, access to the PILAGG seminar is limited to 10 external guests. If you intend to attend the seminar, please send an email to damien.charlotin@sciencespo.fr indicating your full name (first come, first served). Security officers will be provided with the list of participants, do not forget to bring a VALID ID. Thank you for your understanding. 

Managerial Governance and the Mathematical Turn: Legal Indicators as Performance Measures

Scholars from different disciplines increasingly point out to the governance role indicators tend to play in contemporary societies. Indicators have been described as “integral to the fabric of global governance” (Cooley 2015), a “technology of governance” (Davis, Kingsbury & Merry 2012),  “tools in the global struggle for law” (Lewkowicz 2014), “a mode of governance” (Frydman 2014; Engle Merry 2011), and even, for some of them, as “weapons of choice for the knights of investment climate discourse” promoted globally (Perry-Kessaris 2011). Global legal indicators grow in the vacuum of global legal authority as a means of conveying particular views of how organisations should arrange and conduct their affairs and as a way of monitoring implementation. This paper attempts to characterise the managerial mode of governance indicators promote and to analyse the mechanisms through which it generates legitimacy and reactivity to indicators’ measures (Espeland & Sauder 2007). It is argued that legal indicators are not standalone tools but integral to a performance management and control mode of governance. By looking at concrete indicators (e.g. S&P Ratings, Doing Business, World Governance Indicators, Legal Certainty Index), the paper will show the different phases of managerial governance and will discuss how indicators purport to shape a new understanding of law and a new mode of exercising authority at a global scale.

  • Discussant: Christiane Arndt (OECD)

When? On Friday 11th March, 2.30 – 5.30 pm

Where? At Sciences Po Law School, 13 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris, Salle de réunion (4th floor).