【新刊速递】第03期 | International Organization Vol.73, No.3, 2019

In recent decades, IGOs, NGOs, private firms and even states have begun to regularly package and distribute information on the relative performance of states. From the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index to the Financial Action Task Force blacklist, global performance indicators (GPIs) are increasingly deployed to influence governance globally. We argue that GPIs derive influence from their ability to frame issues, extend the authority of the creator, and — most importantly — to invoke recurrent comparison that stimulates governments’ concerns for their own and their country’s reputation. Their public and ongoing ratings and rankings of states are particularly adept at capturing attention not only at elite policy levels but also among other domestic and transnational actors. GPIs thus raise new questions for research on politics and governance globally. What are the social and political effects of this form of information on discourse, policies and behavior? What types of actors can effectively wield GPIs and on what types of issues? In this symposium introduction, we define GPIs, describe their rise, and theorize and discuss these questions in light of the findings of the symposium contributions.

This paper highlights how international organizations can use global performance indicators (GPIs) to drive policy change through transnational market pressure. When international organizations are credible assessors of state policy, and when monitored countries compete for market resources, GPIs transmit information about country risk and stabilize market expectations. Under these conditions banks and investors may restrict access to capital in noncompliant states and incentivize increased compliance. I demonstrate this market-enforcement mechanism by analyzing the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body that issues nonbinding recommendations to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The FATF’s public listing of noncompliant jurisdictions has prompted international banks to move resources away from listed states and raised the costs of continued noncompliance, significantly increasing the number of states with laws criminalizing terrorist financing. This finding suggests a powerful pathway through which institutions influence domestic policy and highlights the power of GPIs in an age where information is a global currency.

【题目】The Millennium Development Goals and Education: Accountability and Substitution in Global Assessment

【作者】James H. Bisbee, James R. Hollyer, B. Peter Rosendorff and James Raymond Vreeland

【摘要】精确的国际指标和评估可能会促使各国政府改变政策，从而根据这些指标寻求更有利的评估。因此，本文探讨了全球绩效指标（GPIs）的二级效应。在政府拥有有限资源并不得不在不同的公共产品投资中进行权衡时，那么一个精确针对某一特定公共产品的GPI，可能会导致政府选择投资该指标针对的公共产品而替换掉了另一个相关的公共产品。本文认为GPI的主要作用（衡量公共利益）和替代效应是根据国内政治制度和目标国家的信息环境而系统地变化的。具体而言，本文认为GPIs的主要作用和替代效应对于最不负责任（不透明和非民主）的政府来说应该最大，而对于最负责任的政府来说应该最小。本文通过形式模型来说明这些论点的逻辑，并用114个国家的小学和中学入学率的数据予以检验。最后，本文发现，国家会用小学入学率（这是千年发展目标的一部分）的指标对中学入学率（这不是千年发展目标中的一部分）的指标进行替代，但是随着政府责任感上升，这种替代效应会减弱。

【题目】A Race to the Top? The Aid Transparency Index and the Social Power of Global Performance Indicators

【作者】Dan Hoing, Catherine Weaver

【摘要】最近对全球绩效指标（GPIs）的研究揭示了非国家行为体在世界政治中可以积累和使用的独特力量。这种力量是如何以及何时运作的？通过混合研究方法，我们研究了援助透明度指数（ATI）的影响，这是由一个在英国的小型非政府机构“公开你的资助”（Publish What You Fund）制作的年度评级和排名指数。ATI寻求塑造发展援助的捐助者在透明度方面的行为，即他们公开披露的信息的质量和种类。为了研究ATI的作用，本文构建了援助者在被ATI涵盖前后（2006～2013）的原始面板数据集，以检验捐献者是否（以及有哪些）受到ATI的影响进而改变了他们的行为。为了进一步探讨捐赠者行为变化的因果机制，本文使用2010至2017年间进行的超过150个关键信息提供者的访谈来进行定性研究。本文的分析揭示了ATI影响强大援助国的条件。与凯莉（Kelley）和西蒙斯（Simmons）的核心论点——GPIs通过社会压力施加影响相一致，本文发现，ATI主要通过直接影响精英来塑造援助者的行为：这种直接影响包括专业规范的扩散、组织式学习和同伴压力。

We argue that the World Bank has successfully marshaled the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) Index to amass considerable influence over business regulations worldwide. The Ease of Doing is a global performance indicator (GPI), and GPIs—especially those that rate and rank states against one another—are intended to package information to influence the views of an audience important to the target, such as foreign investors or voters, thus generating pressures that induce a change in the target’s behavior. The World Bank has succeeded in shaping the global regulatory environment even though the bank has no explicit mandate over regulatory policy and despite questions about EDB accuracy and required policy tradeoffs. We show that the EDB has a dominating market share among business climate indicators. We then use media analyses and observational data to show that EDB has motivated state regulatory shifts. States respond to being publicly ranked and some restructure bureaucracies accordingly. Next we explore plausible influence channels for the EDB ranking and use an experiment involving US portfolio managers to build on existing economics research and examine whether the rankings influence investor sentiment within the experiment. Using a case study of India’s multiyear interagency effort to rise in the EDB rankings, as well as its decision to create subnational EDB rankings, we bring the strands of the argument together by showing how politicians see the ranking as affecting domestic politics, altering investor sentiment, and engaging bureaucratic reputation. Overall, a wide variety of evidence converges to illustrate the pressures through which the World Bank has used state rankings to achieve its vision of regulatory reform.

What explains differential rates of ethnic violence in postcolonial Africa? I argue that ethnic groups organized as a precolonial state (PCS) exacerbated interethnic tensions in their postcolonial country. Insecure leaders in these countries traded off between inclusive coalitions that risked insider coups and excluding other ethnic groups at the possible expense of outsider rebellions. My main hypotheses posit that PCS groups should associate with coups because their historically rooted advantages often enabled accessing power at the center, whereas other ethnic groups in their countries—given strategic incentives for ethnopolitical exclusion—should fight civil wars more frequently than ethnic groups in countries without a PCS group. Analyzing originally compiled data on precolonial African states provides statistical evidence for these implications about civil wars and coups between independence and 2013 across various model specifications. Strikingly, through 1989, thirty of thirty-two ethnic group-level major civil war onsets occurred in countries with a PCS group.