The Global Institutionalization of a Scientific Profession: The Case of Statistics, 1800-2014

• In Event: 4259 - Transnational Processes in the World Society

Abstract

How does a profession become globally institutionalized? This article analyzes the worldwide founding of national statistics associations from 1800 to 2014, arguing that the statistics profession emerged in the nineteenth-century West and spread to other parts of the world in the twentieth century. Based on an integrated institutionalist framework, I conduct event history analysis to demonstrate that the process of the global professionalization of statistics is determined by both national characteristics and the world polity. On the one hand, democracy and national material capacity generally encourage the establishment of the statistics profession, and the effect of colonialism is in the opposite direction. On the other hand, intergovernmental organizations create a world polity in which the statistics profession is able to be diffused and constructed. Separate analyses for the pre-1945 and post-1945 eras indicate that, while there are regional and temporal variations, the world polity is a robust factor throughout the entire period of analysis.

Author

• Jing-Mao Ho