Despite the multiplicity of actors, crises, and fields of action, global public policy has known one constant, that is, the ubiquity of indicators in the production of governing knowledge. This article theoretically engages with the phenomenon of hyper-quantification of global governance in the context of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), debated and introduced in 2015. Increasingly metrics—such as indicators and quantified data to monitor targets and goals—are no longer just tools of governance but rather are emblematic of the new types of political cultures, enabling an interplay of material, techno-political, and organizational structures within which (statistical) knowledge is produced, disseminated, and translated into global public policy. The paper unpacks this complexity by proposing a new theoretical approach to quantification as an “epistemic infrastructure,” which emerges across three levels: materialities (such as data and indicators), interlinkages (such as networks and communities), and paradigms (such as new ways of doing policy work). Using the lens of the “epistemic infrastructure” on the SDGs, this article and the others in this special issue analyze the ways that quantified knowledge practices—in widely varying policy arenas, scales, and geographic regions—are at the heart of the production of its global public policy.

中文翻译：

---

量化世界中的全球公共政策：作为认知基础设施的可持续发展目标

尽管行动者、危机和行动领域多种多样，但全球公共政策已经知道一个不变的因素，那就是在管理知识的生产中指标无处不在。本文从理论上探讨了 2015 年辩论和引入的 17 个可持续发展目标 (SDG) 背景下全球治理的超量化现象。不再只是治理工具，而是新型政治文化的象征，使物质、技术-政治和组织结构相互影响，（统计）知识在其中产生、传播并转化为全球公共政策。本文通过提出一种新的量化理论方法来解开这种复杂性，将量化作为一种​​“认知基础设施”，它出现在三个层面：物质性（如数据和指标）、相互联系（如网络和社区）和范式（如新政策工作的方式）。本文和本期特刊中的其他文章从可持续发展目标的“认知基础设施”的角度分析了量化知识实践的方式——在广泛不同的政策领域、规模和地理区域——是生产的核心。其全球公共政策。