‘Not too high, not too low’: transparency, opacity and the politics of poverty measurement in Jordan

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4 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

This paper explores the politics of creating and calibrating monetary poverty indicators in Jordan using interviews with policy-shapers and documentary analysis. It highlights the significance of these dynamics for conceptualizing governance and statehood in the Middle East. I argue that poverty indicators have served a dual purpose: they have functioned as a tool of state legibility, seeking to enable governments to act on poverty and increase accountability. At the same time, opacity in their production has made it possible to shirk responsibility for worsening socio-economic situations. The combination has helped to reproduce the state as a distinct entity that should, at least in principle, be able to tackle socio-economic inequalities. By empirically and conceptually highlighting the intertwinement between transparency and opacity, the article not only contributes a new perspective to debates around governance through indicators, but also to de-exceptionalizing the Middle East in discussions on the globalized politics of development.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages19
JournalGlobalizations
Early online date5 Apr 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 5 Apr 2023

Bibliographical note

Published open access, hence I'd prefer not to have the copy of the author's manuscript pubished to avoid confusion

Funding
This work was supported by DUNIA BEAM - Erasmus Mundus; DUNI1301743]; EU Sixth Framework Programme, FP6 - CITIZENS, RAMSES II [grant number 513366]; German Academic Exchange Service(DAAD) [grant number (Z) 55414388].

Keywords

  • Indicators
  • Jordan
  • Middle East
  • government
  • opacity
  • poverty

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Public Administration
  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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