Politics and policy evaluation

Abstract

Traditionally, the role of external evaluators has been based on the positivist paradigm of the ‘neutral’ researcher. It is, however, contestable whether evaluators can be or whether they ought to be politically impartial. ‘Fourth generation evaluation’ delineated by Guba and Lincoln represents a more stakeholder-focused approach to policy and programme evaluation while other writers have asserted the need to take an overtly ideological stance in order to represent marginalised groups. We contend in this article that in order to be methodologically sound, evaluation research has to be participative and democratic. Since policy making is inherently a political process, evaluators have to be able to live with the possibility of their democratically derived data being selectively used or even rejected.

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