Independence of Official Statistics : Norms, Arrangements, Instruments

This book explores the independence of official statistics and describes the various legal and professional norms, institutional arrangements, instruments and practices that statisticians have developed over recent decades to protect their work from political interference. It argues that this ‘drive for independence’, which saw the replication of these norms, arrangements, and instruments across countries, was largely led by the international epistemic community of statisticians, and it identifies some of the paths and processes that enabled this drive.

Jean-Guy Prévost is Professor of Political Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, and a member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRT). His areas of interest are the political and critical analysis of statistical data, statistical independence, statistical structures, norms and practices, and Italian political history. His publications include: A Total Science. Statistics in Liberal and Fascist Italy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), Statistics, Public Debate and the State (with Jean-Pierre Beaud; Pickering and Chatto, 2012), “The Battle over Greek Deficit Statistics”, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 39, 2, October 2021, 439-457, “Past, present and future of Canadian statistics”, Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 36 (2), June 2020, 355–363, and “The 1946 Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections: An Experiment in Quantitative Political Science”, Histoire et mesure, 2018, 2, vol. XXXIII, p. 163-192.