Invisible Mechanisms

Abstract

The mandate for evaluators to ‘look inside the black box’ of an intervention has become a familiar and heeded cry. So whether it is process evaluators with their logic maps, or theories-of-change researchers with their intervention stepping stones, or realists with their context, mechanism outcome configurations, searchlights have been aimed into the gloom. So much so that a contemporary sounding riposte, ‘been in there, done for that’ might be deemed to reflect the current state of play in evaluation research.

This article, nonetheless, warns against complacency. It peers even further into the darkest reaches of the inky blackness, and urges other researchers to follow. It throws light on the presence of an overlooked set of program mechanisms, so deeply buried that they are almost invisible. The processes I have in mind are missed because they are tacit, mundane, over-familiar, and taken for granted and, as result, they often overlooked. And yet they are often responsible for a goodly part of impact of a goodly number of interventions.

As such, they deserve a sustained program of research and this article sets out a brief agenda for such inquiries.