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).

A participatory decision support system for contaminated brownfield redevelopment: a case study from France

“…We designed and applied a participatory process to support a decision-making process regarding brownfield redevelopment. It relied on the identification of stakeholders and the comprehension of the context in which the brownfield site was embedded (Kontogianni et al 2001) and followed the three fundamental steps of MODE (Floc'Hlay and Plottu 1998).…”

“…Based on these requirements, this paper aims to show how such a participatory evaluation process can be applied to a real-life decision problem: the redevelopment of a contaminated brownfield site in France. Using the Model for the Operationalization of Democratic Evaluation (MODE) developed by Floc'hlay and Plottu (1998), we have designed a participatory process that fosters stakeholder empowerment to implement participatory multicriteria evaluations. MODE consists of three main components: empowerment; participatory evaluation and multicriteria evaluation (Floc'Hlay and Plottu 1998).…”

“…Using the Model for the Operationalization of Democratic Evaluation (MODE) developed by Floc'hlay and Plottu (1998), we have designed a participatory process that fosters stakeholder empowerment to implement participatory multicriteria evaluations. MODE consists of three main components: empowerment; participatory evaluation and multicriteria evaluation (Floc'Hlay and Plottu 1998). These phases enable the widest possible participation of stakeholders in an evaluation process, and facilitate decision-making by identifying and thwarting any risk of conflict.…”

“…The objective of this first step is also to raise stakeholders' awareness regarding their collective interests in the reconversion of a brownfield site. It corresponds to an approaching and learning phase (Floc'Hlay and Plottu 1998;Gamboa 2006). To implement this, homogeneous focus groups were used with the general population (Krueger et al 2001;Morgan 1996).…”

How Can I Help You? Questioning the Role of Evaluation Techniques in Democratic Decision-Making Processes

“…During the subsequent decades, practically all evaluation techniques were developed-and expressly presented-as methods designed to aid decision-making (see e.g., [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]). Today, the terms "(decision) aid" and "(decision) support" are increasingly common in the acronyms denoting the new approaches.…”