One might muse that what official statistics are to the consolidation of the modern nation state, composite indicators are to the emergence
of post-modernity, – meaning by this the philosophical critique of the exact science and rational knowledge programme of Descartes and Galileo. Composite indicators give voice to a plurality of different actors and normative views of post-modernity. Not only has the use of composite indicators increased dramatically over the past ten to fifteen years, but the typology of use has widened. To make a recent example of a hitherto unheard use, in 2012 Bill Emmott, former Director of The Economist, used a battery of composite indicators, with a well dramatized presentational style, to describe the decline of a country, and this in a movie seen by millions of viewers. We consider composite indicators as an object populating a multidimensional space whose main axes are advocacy, analysis and quality. We review these issues and try to offer some elements of an epistemology of composite indicators.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic
