An analytical framework to discuss the usability of (environmental) indicators for policy

Evidence on the role of information and knowledge for policy making shows that policy actors seldom use information as a direct input to their decisions. Similar patterns of (non)use have been identified in the case of indicators in the environmental and sustainable development policy domains. The objective of the paper is to elucidate the patterns of environmental indicator use and to argue for the introduction of a ‘politics of policy indicators’. With a limited set of characteristics (e.g. legitimacy, credibility and salience) of indicators, which help to apprehend the usability of indicators, we argue that the usability profile of indicators can be analysed as a matter of construction and deliberation by indicator creators and policy actors. The performance of indicators as policy tools – as rendered with their usability profile – is co-dependent of the institutional embeddedness of the indicators. Our conclusion makes the case that if environmental improvements towards more sustainability are partly relying on the quality and uptake of information into policy processes in order to steer decisions, then the ‘usability profile’ of indicators itself should be subject to collective and conscious steering. This call to ‘steer the steering’ is supported by the wider calls to initiate patterns of ‘reflexive governance’ within the sustainability policy domain.