The Re-Co-Construction of Legitimacy of/Through the Doing Business Indicators

Abstract

This article argues that the Doing Business indicators, their legitimacy (their ability to be defended through some logic or justification arising from standards), and the wider notions of legitimacy (the standards) that they promulgate are all best understood as social, or better still, ‘econosociolegal’ constructions. It tracks their, primarily post-financial crisis, re-co-construction within and beyond the World Bank from servant of the private sector and discipliner of states, to something approaching social champion. But it warns that the perceptions of legitimacy that have been generated by those indicators may well linger.

Keywords: Doing Business, Legal Indicators, World Bank, Econosociolegal

JEL Classification: K00