ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a central set of bureaucratic practices that constitute distinct "ways of knowing"—evaluation and simulation instruments. It argues that evaluation and simulation (E&S) instruments underpin international bureaucracies' claims to expertise by endowing the knowledge they produce with seeming neutrality and objectivity, and also constrain policy action by delineating the "policy space", i.e. the realm of acceptable and possible policy action. International bureaucracies have wholeheartedly embraced the new culture of administration associated with discourses of "New Public Management" and "evidence-based policy-making". Most contemporary approaches that emphasize the knowledge production activity of international bureaucracies do not explicitly elucidate how they acquire their knowledge authority. To reveal the discursive effects of E&S instruments, the chapter analyzes the backdrop of the global politics of social cash transfers (SCTs). E&S instruments have also helped promote the rise of SCTs as a global policy model.
