How Numbers Rule the World

Lorenzo Fioramonti (@globalreboot) is associate professor and Jean Monnet chair in regional integration and governance studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where he directs the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation. He is also senior fellow at the Centre for Social Investment of the University of Heidelberg and at the Hertie School of Governance, Germany, as well as associate fellow at the United Nations University. He is the author of several books about development policies, global and regional governance, alternative economies and social progress indicators, including Gross Domestic Problem: The Politics Behind the World's Most Powerful Number (Zed Books, 2013). He blogs at www.globalreboot.org.

Lorenzo Fioramonti has written an urgent and highly accessible book, showing just how over-reliant our governance systems are on misleading numbers, which support market power and blur our understanding of the world. And it is also a better and more compelling read than exactly 95.4% of all other important books!

• Introduction: The politics of statistics1. The power of numbers2. New global rulers: the untameable power of credit rating3. Fiddling while the planet burns: the marketization of climate change4. Measuring the unmeasurable: the financialization of nature5. Numbers for good? The quest for aid effectiveness and social impactConclusion: Rethinking numbers, rethinking governance