To redress this, we follow the birth and ongoing making of the national ranking (KKIK) used to measure the quality of Swedish municipalities from 2007-2020.

Empirically, we show how the KKIK emerges and constantly co-evolves with variation in its content, structure, mode of production and presentation. Other things and people, with which KKIK becomes entangled, are also shaped by and shape the KKIK, including competing algorithmically generated rankings and a new professional group of quality controllers who co-create and diversely deploy the KKIK.

But this evolvement of the ranking did not result in complete change over time; some qualities of the ranking endured, such as its non-additive nature. Accordingly, the performance indicators have never been summed and the KKIK remains as a suite of multiple rankings (around 40) enabling collaborative learning (rather than competition) and situated choice (rather than uniform discipline).