Designating statistical capacity development as a target for measurement in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) created a dilemma for statistical decision-makers in the United Nations system, as some saw the inclusion of statistical capacity in SDG17 as a “conflict of interest,” making their work both a goal of the SDGs and a means to achieve them. In 2022, there are five indicators for measuring both the statistical capacity of individual countries and the support provided to strengthen it, including one indicator for measuring a country’s ability to monitor the SDGs themselves. In this article, I argue that the epistemic infrastructuring of statistical capacity into the SDG framework is a privileged case. By parsing the interconnections between the data, actors, networks, and processes that constitute statistical capacity on national and global levels, we can understand how central these materialities and processes are in constituting the larger policy agenda of the SDGs as well as debates over the problems that statistical capacity is meant to solve. Like all indicators in the SDG framework, statistical capacity indicators are performative – defined and delineated by the global statistics community that also helps define and delineate the SDG framework’s development problems. Unlike other indicators, however, statistical capacity indicators have the added weight of also producing the conditions of possibility for the “SDG framework itself.” In this way, debates over what constitutes statistical capacity and its strengthening are also debates about ownership of policy agendas and where tensions between the local and global erupt.

中文翻译：

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统计能力发展和认知基础设施的生产

将统计能力发展指定为可持续发展目标 (SDG) 中的衡量目标给联合国系统的统计决策者带来了两难境地，因为一些人认为将统计能力纳入可持续发展目标 17 是一种“利益冲突”，使得他们的工作既是可持续发展目标的目标，也是实现这些目标的手段。到 2022 年，有五个指标可以衡量各个国家的统计能力以及为加强统计能力而提供的支持，其中一个指标可以衡量一个国家监测可持续发展目标本身的能力。在本文中，我认为将统计能力纳入 SDG 框架的认知基础设施是一个特殊案例。通过解析数据、参与者、网络之间的互连，以及在国家和全球层面构成统计能力的过程，我们可以理解这些重要性和过程在构成可持续发展目标的更大政策议程以及关于统计能力旨在解决的问题的辩论中的核心地位。与可持续发展目标框架中的所有指标一样，统计能力指标具有执行性——由全球统计界定义和描绘，这也有助于定义和描绘可持续发展目标框架的发展问题。然而，与其他指标不同的是，统计能力指标具有额外的权重，它还为“可持续发展目标框架本身”创造了可能的条件。这样，