Reddit mentions of Governance by Indicators: Global Power through Classification and Rankings (Law and Global Governance)

A fascinating question! And, fortunately, one that has been the subject of a recent rise in research. One important line of work is by Wendy Espeland and co-authors on "quantification." The two most relevant papers are "Rankings and Reactivity" and "The Discipline of Rankings". There's also an interesting new line of work by some Law and Society scholars about the proliferation of rankings in global governance. An edited volume on the subject is here (quite expensive!), and there are also a few papers if you search Google Scholar for things like indicators + Sally Engle Merry.

Beyond that, you might check out Michele Lamont's work on the more general process of valuation and evaluation.

I hope that helps!