Governance by numbers 2.0: policy brokerage as an instrument of global governance in the era of information overload

The article investigates how and when the two first movers in knowledge-based regulation–the OECD and the World Bank–developed policy brokerage as an instrument of global governance in the education sector. We also examine how their target clientele–national governments–responds to this instrument. Given the surplus of research evidence in today's digital economy, intergovernmental organisations have the challenge of standing out as trusted and credible knowledge brokers in a crowded space. The authors make the case for a comparative research programme–tentatively labeled ‘Governance by Numbers 2.0’–that is informed by a multidisciplinary (history, political science, interdisciplinary policy studies) interpretive framework and that advances a transnational, relational method of inquiry which draws attention to the global/national nexus.