Integrating theory-based evaluation and process tracing in the evaluation of civil society gender budget initiatives

Abstract

Over the last two decades, gender-responsive budgeting has gained prominence as an effective tool for governments to fulfil gender commitments and the realisation of women’s rights. To date, however, limited empirical evidence exists of the impact and effectiveness of gender budget initiatives. This article proposes and demonstrates the integration of theory-based evaluation and process tracing to examine the effects of local-level civil society-led gender-responsive budgeting on maternal health service delivery in Kabale District, rural Uganda. It involves four steps: explicating the programme theory linking the gender budget initiative to the intended outcome; theorising the underlying causal mechanism; making case-specific predictions of observable manifestations of the mechanism; and testing the empirical evidence using Bayesian logic to make causal inferences about the effects of the civil society gender budget initiative on maternal health service delivery. This approach strengthens our confidence in the inferences made about causality and the effects of gender budget initiatives.