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 language | English |
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Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Globalizations |
Early online date | 5 Apr 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-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 confusionFunding
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