The Science of the State. A comparative analysis of Statistical National Offices in the European Union

Statistics was established and accompanied the existence and formation of state in the modernization process. Understood and used as a science born not within the civil society, but within the heart of the modern state, statistics has functioned for centuries as a very ideological social knowledge process controlled only by the state. This paper based on neo-Weberian approach points out that what had been wide-known in modern times as being political becomes nowadays more bureaucratic due to various political processes such as the European Union integration or New Public Management reforms, challenges that directly affect the place of national official statistics within the European governance systems(1).