The Evaluation Enterprise: A Critical View (Comparative Policy Evaluation)

Today, evaluation is part of governing systems and is supported by powerful institutions. It is taken for granted that evaluation leads to betterment. However, evaluation itself is seldom analyzed from a critical perspective. In this book, Jan-Eric Furubo and Nicoletta Stame have assembled an international line-up of distinguished experts and emerging scholars to fill this void.

Examining evaluation from a critical – or evaluative – perspective, each contribution in this book offers a systematic and critical insight into the broader relationship between evaluation and society. Divided into three parts, the various chapters ask questions such as:

• What are the consequences of the institutionalization of evaluation?
• Has the professionalization of evaluators favored their action in the public interest?
• Is the money spent on evaluation worth it?
• Is the market of evaluation allowing real competition for the best services?

The answers to these questions demonstrate that the constitutive effects of the social practice of evaluation can also be the suppression of other forms of knowledge and the favoring of certain notions about societal development and political and administrative processes.

Jan-Eric Furubo has worked at different Swedish ministries, governmental agencies and The National Audit Office. He was co-editor of the International Atlas of Evaluation (2002), Evaluation – Seeking Truth or Power? (2011) and Evaluation in Turbulent Times (2013). He was the first president of the Swedish Evaluation Society and has had different roles within the European Evaluation Society.

Nicoletta Stame retired as Professor of Social Policy at "Sapienza" University, Rome. She was the first president of the Italian Evaluation Association and is a past president of the European Evaluation Society. She is associate editor of Evaluation. She is interested in the theory and methods of evaluation, on which she has published widely.