A Developing Evaluation Culture in Romania: Myths,Gaps and Triggers

Abstract

Most of the efforts undertaken to build national evaluation capacity in Romania are directed towards institutionalizing evaluation. These efforts might lead to the establishment of a national evaluation system. But a national evaluation culture — not easily created by regulations, formal tools and institutional hierarchies alone — is nevertheless emerging and is already having an impact on the formal institutionalization of evaluation. In these circumstances the supply and demand sides of evaluation are expected to remain interdependent. For that reason, analysing the national evaluation culture from the perspective of the values shared by practitioners who contribute to the establishment of the evaluation capacity might be relevant. It is important to know if the practitioners who are engaged in the evaluation process share a language when they undertake various activities: speak about evaluation; prepare terms of reference for an evaluation assignment; select the best approach to that evaluation; carry it out; assess its quality; and use its outputs. The hypothesis of this study was that in an emerging evaluation culture — as there is in Romania — there is a difference between the values shared by evaluation managers (demand) and by evaluators (supply) and furthermore, that within each of these groups there are values not shared by the majority. In the Romanian context what are these differences? What explains them? And what are their implications?