Like the Supreme Audit Institutions of many other OECD countries, the Danish National Audit Office’s (Rigsrevisionen) has stepped up its performance auditing of public administrations and agencies. This tendency has launched a discussion of whether or not supreme audit institutions are acting politically. Underlying this discussion is, of course, our understanding of what politics is and how it relates to measurement. This paper, first, seeks to clarify how we may grasp the (potential) political effects of measuring and quantifying public service activities. Secondly, based on the case of the Danish National Audit Office's auditing of the teaching at Danish universities, this paper aims to show how the quantification of the quality of university teaching contributed to make universities viewing their teaching activities differently and ultimately change them.
