Democratic Evaluation

Abstract

Citizens, due to a lack of participation in public decision-making, often exercise ‘counterpower’ when a decision is taken, which can result in delaying or abandoning public projects. This could have been prevented if power and counterpower had negotiated during the decision-making process. Democratic Evaluation brings such a simultaneous exercise of power and counterpower to public decision-making. The evaluation method that we are proposing must enable a democratic type of evaluation to be made operational. Our aim is to demonstrate that the implementation of Democratic Evaluation is only conceivable when Empowerment Evaluation, Participatory Evaluation and Multicriteria Evaluation are associated and considered as stages in the same evaluation process. This constitutes what we call a ‘Model for the Operationalization of Democratic Evaluation’ (MODE).

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bana e Costa, C. A. (ed.) (1990) Readings in Multiple Criteria Decision Aid. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Conseil Scientifique de l'Evaluation (1991) L'évaluation de l'expertise à la responsabilité. Paris: la Documentation Française.

Ewald, F. (1986) L'Etat-Providence. Paris: Grasset.

Fayat, C. (1993) ‘De l'esprit de sel dans la décision. Des méthodes et des choix multicritères: un point de vue praticien’: Rennes, Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance (CNED).

Fetterman, D. M. (1994) ‘Empowerment Evaluation’, Evaluation Practice 15(1): 1–15.

Fetterman, D. M. , S. J. Kaftarian and A. Wandersman (eds) (1996) Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-Assessment & Accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Floc’hlay, B. (1997) ‘Evaluation des services publics: d'une logique gestionnaire à une logique démocratique’, Revue Sciences de la Société (3): 131–145.

Gamel, C. (1991) ‘L'apport de la philosophie sociale à l'économie du bien-être: une question de procédure?’, Economies et Sociétés (4): 57–85.

Godet, M. (1991) De l'anticipation à l'action. Paris: Dunod.

10.

Guba, E. G. , and Y. S. Lincoln (1989) Fourth Generation Evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

11.

Maystre, L. Y. , J. Pictet and J. Simos (1994) Méthodes multicritères ELECTRE. Description, conseil, pratiques et cas d'application à la gestion environnementale. Lausanne: Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes.

12.

Plottu, E. (1993) Intercommunalité: la communauté de communes. Questions et méthodes, Mémoire, Université de Rennes 1.

13.

Plottu, Eric (1996) ‘Environnement: le principe de l'évaluation hiérarchisée’, speech to the inauguration colloquium of the European Society for Ecological Economics, Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, 23–25 May.

14.

Rawls, John (1971) A Theory of Justice. Harvard, MA: University Press.

15.

Roy, Bernard (1985) Méthode multicritère d'aide à la décision. Paris: Economica.

16.

Roy, Bernard (1990) ‘The outranking approach and the foundations of ELECTRE methods’, in C. A. Bana e Costa (ed.) Readings in Multiple Criteria Decision Aid, pp. 155–183. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

17.

Stufflebeam, D. L. (1994) ‘Empowerment Evaluation, Objectivist Evaluation, and Evaluation Standards: Where The Future of Evaluation Should Not Go and Where It Needs To Go’, Evaluation Practice 15: 321–338.