Numbers have come to dominate our politics and our news cycle. GDP, inflation, CPI, RPI, credit ratings, FTSE, debt ratios, discount rates, the list goes on.

While politicians and commentators wield these numbers to justify their decisions and criticise their opponents, not everyone is convinced we should allow numbers to dominate our political discourse.

In this podcast, Alex Burd talks to Lorenzo Fioramonti, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Sciences and director of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation of the University of Pretoria. and author of a new book, How Numbers Rule the World: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Global Politics.  Note:  An Italian translation is available below this English transcript.

 

Lorenzo began by explaining his thesis.

Lorenzo Fioramonti: We have created a system of accounting, of calculation, of numerical production that is governing all the decisions we take as a society. They dictate the choices that our policy makers take, they dictate what we consider productive or not.

It’s like a meta-analysis, our economists and policy makers are not so powerful as we think in terms of what decisions we take or they are powerful and they find ways of justifying their decisions by using numbers that give an appearance of neutrality to the decisions that they take so that the society can accept them, often when they’re hard, and have a severe impact on our wellbeing; because the numbers somehow make these decisions look inevitable.

Alex Burd: They’re used to mask the motives of controversial decisions, such as in Britain the recent spending cuts?

LF: Yes, I would say that ‘austerity speak’ these days, especially in Europe, is being cloaked under the power of these numbers.

Take GDP. GDP is often used as a way of curbing popular dissent against certain pro market decisions because GDP says the only way for us to develop and grow is to support certain sectors in the business community and therefore we need to be willing to take tough decisions to reduce spending, to reduce benefits and so on. And often at the same time, while we do that, we pay for the subsidies that go into the pockets of those who produce the growth that is reflected in GDP.

So all these numbers, and I could go on and on with other examples, are used in times of austerity to justify the difficult cuts that our governments are putting forward at the moment.

AB: A lot has been made of the fact that UK chancellor, George Osborne, is a politician and many of the people around him are politicians without real world experience. George Osborne also doesn’t have any economics background. Is this a problem as numbers become more and more important?

LF: It is a problem to a certain extent. Numbers are created by experts (or technocrats, as I call them). So when politicians who have been elected by citizens to take decisions in the name of social justice and redistribution and collective wellbeing use numbers without even understanding the methodological components then we have a double problem. We have a problem because those who execute these decisions are doing it in the name of numbers that they themselves do not understand, and they become even more dangerous perpetrators, or executors, of decisions they do not themselves control.

So on the one hand the politics of numbers has given a lot of power to technocrats; some of these technocrats are operating behind the scenes. We don’t see them. Some of them are executive directors in central banks; or they are part of very powerful think tanks and so. Some of them also play political roles, but often the policy makers, those that make the ultimate decisions are influenced by numbers they themselves don’t understand.

AB: I see. You mentioned earlier that one of the numbers you have a problem with is the continued use of GDP. Why when it’s so flawed is it still persisted with?

Ver todos los episodios