Introduction

The need for more and more indicators has become a worldwide phenomenon since the early 1990s. A flavour of this global development can be viewed by entering the key word ‘indicators’ in an Internet search engine. This produces an overwhelming 5.7 million websites that are devoted to indicators, ranging from global institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank to some local community indicators projects. If one can keep aloof as a curious observer, one may ask some cynical questions: ‘To what extent can this global indicator perfusion be seen as the beginning of a trend of popularisation of statistics?’ ‘Are indicators just the policy accessories of the time — a must have in the current fashion of governance?’ ‘Is the current development of indicators an old hat from those developed thirty years ago?’ ‘Will the current hyping of indicator projects fall into an inevitable cycle of downfall in the future?’