How Do Metrics Shape Polities? From Analogue to Digital Measurement Regimes in International Health Politics

This article analyzes a historical shift from analogue to digital measurement regimes that have produced international health metrics. The historical comparative study shows that each of these measurement regimes was deeply influential in shaping the international health polity. The article conceptualizes measurement regimes based on science and technology studies as techno-social assemblages producing international health metrics. Building on polity theory, I argue that these regimes exert participation, problematization, and mode-of intervention effects in international politics. I analyze how the analogue international regime of measuring health acquired dominance after the Second World War. It built on national statistical infrastructures and international organizations and problematized international health politics as guiding nations along the development path of the Global North. It limited participation to medical and statistical experts. The digital regime—influential since the 1990s—is embedded into a private research institute and focuses on the digital recalculation of health metrics. It has shaped the field of international health politics as continuously searching for neglected problems, extended participation to a large group of passive users and supports cost-effective interventions. This article contributes conceptually and empirically to the international political sociology of health. It describes how socio-technical assemblages like measurement regimes shape international polities.