Quantifying and Performing the Sovereign Debt Crisis

This article explores different empirical settings where methods for quantifying public debt operate: accounting entries, scenarios of budgetary sustainability, and sovereign ratings. Embedded in the political game, these indicators have the potential to destabilize government policies, but also to perform sovereign debt crises. More than a passive mirror of reality, public debt measurement techniques shape the state’s value, that is, its price but also what it is worth in accounting, financial, and economic terms. They also prioritize the state’s political objectives, for example sanctifying creditors’ repayment at real value, and contribute to setting the agenda around an alarming diagnosis of the “crisis” of public and social accounts.