Evaluation and the Policy Context: The European Experience

Stame, Nicoletta

doi:10.1177/1035719x0300300210

Cited by 18 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Alongside NPM, intergovernmental relations are regarded as important stimuli for launching evaluations, especially in these countries that were late adopters. Since the millennium change, a lot of policy fields have received direct questions or impulses to evaluate from the EU (Schwab 2009;Stame 2003;Speer 2012). Fields such as (social) economy (Stame 2003) and environment (Mickwitz 2013) are typical examples in this regard.…”

Section: Intergovernmental Relations Within the European Union (Hypotmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the millennium change, a lot of policy fields have received direct questions or impulses to evaluate from the EU (Schwab 2009;Stame 2003;Speer 2012). Fields such as (social) economy (Stame 2003) and environment (Mickwitz 2013) are typical examples in this regard. In exchange for Structural Funds subsidies, the EU established a stringent system of evaluation requirements in these areas.…”

Section: Intergovernmental Relations Within the European Union (Hypotmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The EU structural funds, in particular, are said to have played a key role in this regard. Linked to the granting of social funds for human resources and employment, territorial rebalancing, social cohesion and rural development, countries/regions had to prove these funds were well spent through monitoring and evaluation (Stame 2003). In this regard, the EU developed special guidelines and manuals.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Warum initiieren Minister Evaluationen? Eine Fallstudie der flämischen Regierung in Belgien

Pattyn¹,

Peuter

Brans³

2019

Polit Vierteljahresschr

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Policy evaluations can be set up for multiple purposes including accountability, policy learning and policy planning. The question is, however, how these purposes square with politics itself. To date, there is little knowledge on how government ministers present the rationale of evaluations. This article is the first to provide a diachronic study of discourse about evaluation purposes and encompass a wide range of policy fields. We present an analysis of evaluation announcements in so-called ministerial policy notes issued between 1999 and 2019 by the Flemish government in Belgium. The research fine-tunes available evidence on catalysts for conducting evaluations. The Flemish public sector turns out to be a strong case where New Public Management brought policy evaluation onto the agenda, but this has not resulted in a prominent focus on accountability-oriented evaluations. We further show that policy fields display different evaluation cultures, albeit more in terms of the volume of evaluation demand than in terms of preferences for particular evaluation purposes.

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Section: Intergovernmental Relations Within the European Union (Hypotmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Intergovernmental Relations Within the European Union (Hypotmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Warum initiieren Minister Evaluationen? Eine Fallstudie der flämischen Regierung in Belgien

Pattyn¹,

Peuter

Brans³

2019

Polit Vierteljahresschr

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“…Here, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand were foremost, and some Northern European continental countries (e.g., Sweden) followed. According to Stame (2003), these countries also participated in the Anglo-Saxon debate concerning evaluation methods and techniques. The situation in most European countries has lagged behind this development.…”

Section: Experimentation and Evaluation In The United States And Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Randomized Experiments and Quasi-Experimental Designs in Educational Research

Steiner¹,

Wroblewski²,

Cook³

2009

The SAGE International Handbook of Educational Evaluation

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“…The political challenge therefore involves forging political and societal agreement on the values that should, in turn, underlie evaluation (see Fischer 2006). Reflecting such dynamics, evaluation in the EU grew spectacularly in the 1990s and 2000s, driven by the quest for accountability and learning but also by a demonstrable desire of political actors to "manipulate political opportunity structures" (Schoenefeld and Jordan 2019; see also Stame 2003 andStern 2009). More recently, the perceived and argued-for importance of policy evaluation has been exacerbated by a shift towards austerity in many European countries in the aftermath of the financial crisis that began in 2008 (Streeck and Schäfer 2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politicisation of Evaluation: Constructing and Contesting EU Policy Performance

Stephenson

Schoenefeld²,

Leeuw

2019

Polit Vierteljahresschr

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Although systematic policy evaluation has been conducted for decades and has been growing strongly within the European Union (EU) institutions and in the member states, it remains largely underexplored in political science literatures. Extant work in political science and public policy typically focuses on elements such as agenda setting, policy shaping, decision making, or implementation rather than evaluation. Although individual pieces of research on evaluation in the EU have started to emerge, most often regarding policy "effectiveness" (one criterion among many in evaluation), a more structured approach is currently missing. This special issue aims to address this gap in political science by focusing on four key focal points: evaluation institutions (including rules and cultures), evaluation actors and interests (including competencies, power, roles and tasks), evaluation design (including research methods and theories, and their impact on policy design and legislation), and finally, evaluation purpose and use (including the relationships between discourse and scientific evidence, political attitudes and strategic use). The special issue considers how each of these elements contributes to an evolving governance system in the EU, where evaluation is playing an increasingly important role in decision making.Zusammenfassung Obwohl systematische Policy-Evaluation bereits seit vielen Jahrzehnten betrieben wird und insbesondere innerhalb der Institutionen der Europäischen Union (EU) und der EU-Mitgliedstaaten stark gewachsen ist, wird sie weiterhin größtenteils von der politikwissenschaftlichen Literatur vernachlässigt. Bestehende Arbeiten in der Politikwissenschaft und der Policy-Analyse konzentrieren sich meist auf andere Themen, wie Agenda-Setting, Policy-Entstehung, politische Entscheidungsprozesse oder die Implementierung öffentlicher Politiken. Während an einigen Stellen vereinzelte Forschungsarbeiten zur Evaluation in der EU erscheinen, die sich meist auf Policy-Effektivität konzentrieren (ein Kriterium unter vielen), fehlt bisher ein strukturierter Ansatz. Das aktuelle PVS-Schwerpunktheft stößt in diese Forschungslücke und konzentriert sich auf vier Schlüsselaspekte: Evaluationsinstitutionen (inklusive ihrer Regeln und Kulturen), Evaluationsakteure (Kompetenzen, Macht, Aufgaben, Interessen und Interaktionen), Evaluationsmethoden und -theorien (inklusive Folgenabschätzung und deren Einfluss auf das Policy-Design und Gesetzgebung) und zum Schluss Evaluationszwecke und -nutzen (inklusive der Beziehung zwischen Diskurs und wissenschaftlicher Evidenz, politische Einstellungen und strategischem Nutzen). Das Schwerpunktheft betrachtet, inwiefern diese Elemente zur Entwicklung des EU-Governance-Systems beitragen, in dem Evaluation eine immer wichtigere Rolle in Entscheidungsprozessen spielt. Schlüsselwörter EU-Institutionen · Performanz · Evalationsdebatten · Lernen · Evaluationsverwendung 2 Bridging Political Science and Evaluation Studies: Institutions, Actors, Design, and UseSo what is the existing divide acros...

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Evaluation and the Policy Context: The European Experience

Cited by 18 publications

References 2 publications

Warum initiieren Minister Evaluationen? Eine Fallstudie der flämischen Regierung in Belgien

Warum initiieren Minister Evaluationen? Eine Fallstudie der flämischen Regierung in Belgien

Randomized Experiments and Quasi-Experimental Designs in Educational Research

The Politicisation of Evaluation: Constructing and Contesting EU Policy Performance

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