Abstract

Many nations suddenly came into being at some point in history when they did not exist before or had not existed for some time. It can be difficult to prove in the eyes of the international community that they really exist and that their creation rests on a solid foundation. Very often in these cases, statisticians play a very important role: the production of a large and coherent statistical compendium for these new nations is clearly the proof of the existence of these newly created nations; the statistical system put in place allows the new government and administrations to achieve their objectives in an efficient and rational way.

This paper aims to present the fundamental role played by statistics during the emergence of new nations or supranational institution and its importance for the processes of ‘nation building’. When creating these new political decision-making spaces, the need to govern based on reliable, objective, relevant and transparent economic, social and environmental data appears, thus demonstrating the need and interest for governance by data.

This session aims to develop this thesis through four famous historical examples from 1830 to the present day:

• Until 1830, Belgium had never existed as an independent nation.Its provinces, under various sovereignties (Spanish, French, then Dutch from 1815 to 1830), had had varied geographical delimitations. On September 23, 1830, a revolution broke out in Brussels. A provisional government decides to separate from the northern provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1832, Alphonse Quételet published a statistical compendium based on the results of the Dutch census of 1830 and various more or less partial statistical studies, in particular the results of the French censuses of 1801 and 1805.This publication was in someway the proof of the existence of this new nation.

• Poland had disappeared from European maps since 1795, and regained its independence in 1919 (Treaty of Versailles). Between 1912 and 1918, statistical yearbooks were published in many European cities with comprehensive statistical demographic and social data pertaining to former Polish lands before the three partitions at the end of the 18th century, thus giving an existence to the future Polish independent state.

• The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) was the first administration created in 1993 by the Palestine Liberation Organization, some months before the signing of the Oslo Accords, on the initiative of the President Arafat himself; he considered that a set of economic and social indicators was essential to demonstrate the existence of this territory. In 1995, the first Palestinian Statistical Master Plan was adopted during an international conference held in Jerusalem and Gaza; the PCBS was the first office at the service of the new State of Palestine.

• From 1951 with the creation of the European Steel and Coal Community, building the European Communities did rely upon settling a strong integrated statistical system. Eurostat has established a European statistical system which is today more than a simple juxtaposition of the national systems of the member countries, a step towards a m