With the prospect of World War 3 becoming a reality I am prompted to publish an abridged keynote address I delivered on February 26 2007 at the 60th anniversary of the UN Statistics Commission (UNSC), titled Statistical Commission and the Global Statistical System: the Way Forward. But the main input was about world peace and statistics and how epochs of peace building were marked by statistical interventions.
To understand the development of statistics we need to take a historical perspective and analyse the glacial political movements of the world that are intrinsically associated with or are a consequence of these political forces. The 60th anniversary of the UN Statistics Commission is an opportune time for this.
The milestone relating to the adoption of Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics is yet another major contribution by quiet statisticians regarding the conduct of world politics and its implications for statistics. The development of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the call for the transformation of the UN systems of governance and statistical capacity building may not be idle coincidences of this decade. This is instructive of the fundamental link between statistics and the desire for world peace and stability, the way the world reasons, experiments and forms opinions. An aspiration for transparent representation of phenomena and thereby enhancing accountability of nations and the world. Crisis and instability in the world appear to be the midwife for statistics. If true, the converse is that statistics should be crucial for world peace.
My input will capture the two world wars and what appear to be reactions by statistics. In reflecting upon the 60th anniversary of the UNSC, one cannot overlook the power of intention. For instance, the reasons for an International Statistics Commission convened by the League of Nations in 1920, shortly after the League of Nations, which was founded in June 1919, could have been too much of a coincidence. It is also too much of a coincidence that shortly after the UN replaced its predecessor, the League of Nations in 1946, a year later, it established the UNSC. The declaration of the MDGs and the call for both statistical capacity building by the UNSC as well as the demand by nations for the restructuring of the UN are less likely to be accidents.
Crisis and instability in the world appear to be the midwife for statistics. If true, the converse is that statistics should be crucial for world peace.
The League of Nations’ mandate was established in the post-World War I period mainly to deal with global conflicts before they erupt into open war, to promote diplomacy, foster peace and improve global welfare. So why was a grouping as obscure as statisticians convened? According to Ian Hacking, statistics and statisticians, quiet as they may be, dramatically shape the way the world reasons, the way it experiments and forms opinions. So statisticians are an essential constituency to our understanding of higher order notions such as welfare, equity and world peace. And reading from Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial, “solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent” suggests to a large extent that as the world seeks transparency statisticians become an essential cog in the wheel. I think behind all these developments are deliberate intentions aimed at some goal of which statistics is an integral part.
To understand the position of statistics in society we need first to understand the anatomy of power in nations. Nations consist of political leadership, business, labour and citizens. Citizens are mobilised politically on a set of principles, objectives, promises, political programmes, implementation designs and time frames to task political leadership to deliver on these issues. The function of politics, business and labour is to provide a working formula for delivery.
The power relations in this equation is that business has as its objective, as articulated by Milton Friedman, is to make profit or generate returns to entrepreneurs as we know from microeconomics 101. So business will choose specific activities they exchange for money and or profit. These would be goods and services, such as they are constituted by the International Standard Industrial Classification, which produce them, and by Consumption According to Purpose as we statisticians have classified and know these for global use and consumption. Indeed, if money were to be made without productive inputs and result, such as in gambling, business has shown that they would readily indulge in such adventure and they do. Profit is an end in business and provision of any service that gives a prospect to this end is the means by which business meets it.
Government’s objective is to secure peace and security for citizens, provide health, education, water and sanitation among the most basic of services. And to achieve this, governments deploy profit from business in the form of taxation. So for government the end is provision of services and profit and or money become the means by which this end is achieved.
Labour becomes the means by which these services are rendered in exchange for wages and salaries. So government and business converge on deploying labour for delivering services. Ideally the public who vote give government the mandate to negotiate the best way delivery should take place among business, labour and politics. In South Africa, this forum is called Nedlac.
The role of the quiet statisticians in this anatomy of power is to record the transactions that occur there, aggregate, analyse and present them in volumes that identify contributors, beneficiaries and the extent of contributions, benefits and or losses. In short, the statistics lay bare causal relationships and consequential results. “Solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent.”
Why was the League of Nations formed?
Historians attribute the causes of the two world wars to the crisis of capitalist accumulation and imperialism with its inherent expansionist tendencies to capture markets. The world has sought to mitigate the basis of this aggression by nations to one another by creating first the League of Nations in 1919, which was transformed to the UN in 1946. Tension over the material wellbeing of nations and the world continue.
On June 28 1914, the Archduke of Austria and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo. Though World War 1 was triggered by the chain of events this assassination unleashed, the war’s origins lie deeper, involving national politics, cultures, economics and a complex web of alliances and counterbalances that developed between the various European powers over the 19th century, after the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815 and the ensuing Congress of Vienna as well as the Scramble for Africa in 1885.
Quite clearly, the International Statistical Commission and its successor the UNSC have made tremendous contributions in shaping the world of statistical systems.
The factors behind the outbreak of World War 1 are complicated and intertwined. Some examples are notions of fervent and uncompromising nationalism, unresolved previous disputes, the intricate system of alliances, convoluted and fragmented governance, delays and misunderstandings in diplomatic communications, the arms race of the previous decades as well as the rigidity in military planning. The need for a more civilised world was apparent after counting the costs of war. So the League of Nations was formed.
World War 2 may be one of the most complicated conflicts in history and it is therefore difficult to explain its origin. Many people see World War 2 as a continuation of the first, so many of the causes of World War 1 are applicable to World War 2.
Some of them were the Treaty of Versailles, which placed the blame for World War 1 solely on Germany and imposed harsh treaties on the country, wrecking its economy and embittering the Germans. Others include territorial issues that left all nations that started World War 1, such as Germany, with less territory; fascism in Germany, Italy and Japan that was built largely upon nationalism, perhaps the greatest underlying factor causing the war, and the search for a cohesive “nation state”; a highly militaristic and aggressive attitude among the leaders of Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union, compounded by the traditional militant attitude of the first two.
The League of Nations had collapsed and the need for a new formation that would organise world order was urgent. The UN was born and with it the UNSC.
Sadly, the prospects for a World War 3 resonate as a continuation of the first two global wars. What would statistics look like if at all the third war materialises and statisticians fail to play their role in stopping it?
Statisticians need to remember their role in the League of Nations. They planted the necessary seeds for the valued contribution of statistics in world order and politics. An international convention relating to economic statistics was signed in 1928, followed by eight meetings of experts between 1931 and 1939.
Trewin’s paper outlines in great detail the major contribution of Keynesian economics in the development of statistics, especially those related to macroeconomic models and the development of the system of national accounts. We also know up until very recently, these accounts were less transparent as related to matters of national expenditure on defence.
Only in recent times, under pressure for transparent budgets, are defence expenditures reflected in the GDP or GNP accounts. This was a major breakthrough brought about the statisticians to politics. Importantly also were the gems planted by Mahalanobis and others who set the agenda in 1946 for the birth of the UNSC. They laid the foundation for the Fundamental Principles for Official statistics that were later adopted in 1994 almost 48 years later.
The UNSC in 1947 was an adaptation to a crisis emanating from the International Statistical Commission of 1920. This was born out of a crisis in world politics. To the extent that there are interesting issues to deal with in politics, the field of statistics will always be engaged. Quite clearly, the International Statistical Commission and its successor the UNSC have made tremendous contributions in shaping the world of statistical systems. At the level of organisation, they have contributed to raising the questions and eliciting discourse. At the level of content there is greater scope for professionalism and scientific discovery as other thematic interests and parts of the world bring measurement idiosyncrasies to the table.
Perhaps the most profound question to ask would be, had there been absence of this institution would we have felt the void? It is asking the question, can we do without the world statistics as a basis for networked governances? Statisticians, get your guns of peace and stop the world from tripping into an Armageddon.
Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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