From Census to Sensors: The Bureaucratic Regime and the Data Revolution

Abstract

We examine a profound transformation in the relationship between statistical knowledge and state governance through the lens of two "data regimes." In the earlier bureaucratic regime, government agencies produced expensive, theory-driven data through representative surveys and official reporting mechanisms. These techniques are no longer hegemonic. In the emerging brokerage regime, data production is cheap, decentralized, and dominated by private actors. Passive collection of digital traces is displacing representative sampling; algorithmic pattern detection is supplanting theory-guided analysis; and sensitive administrative data is being recast as raw material for AI systems. In the process, a new, paradoxical, political rationality emerges. The private sector encroaches on critical public functions while supplying the state with precise "truths" about people and collective entities that enhance its capacity to manage them.

Keywords: Administrative Data, AI Systems, State Governance

JEL Classification: H11, O38, Z13