The politicisation of evaluation: constructing and contesting EU policy performance

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

Policy monitoring in the EU: The impact of institutions, implementation, and quality

Policy monitoring is often seen as a crucial ingredient of policy evaluation, but theoretically informed empirical analyses of real-world policy monitoring practices are still rare. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on climate policy monitoring in the European Union, which has a relatively stringent system of greenhouse gas monitoring but a much less demanding approach to monitoring policies. It explores how institutional settings, policy implementation, and the quality of information may impact the practices and politics of policy monitoring. Drawing on quantitative regression models and qualitative interviews, it demonstrates that policy monitoring has evolved over time and is itself subject to implementation pressures, but also exhibits learning effects that improve its quality. In further developing both everyday policy monitoring practices and academic understanding of them, there is a need to pay attention to their design—specifically, the impact of any overarching rules, the institutional support for implementation, and the criteria governing the quality of the information they deliver. In short, policy monitoring should be treated as a governance activity in its own right, raising many different design challenges

Self-compassion and bedtime procrastination: an emotion regulation perspective

The current study extended previous research on self-compassion and health behaviours by examining the associations of self-compassion to bedtime procrastination, an important sleep-related behaviour. We hypothesized that lower negative affect and adaptive emotion regulation would explain the proposed links between self-compassion and less bedtime procrastination. Two cross-sectional online studies were conducted. Study 1 included 134 healthy individuals from the community (mean age 30.22, 77.4% female). Study 2 included 646 individuals from the community (mean age 30.74, 68.9% female) who were screened for the absence of clinical insomnia. Participants in both studies completed measures of self-compassion, positive and negative affect and bedtime procrastination. Participants in study 2 also completed a measure of cognitive reappraisal. Multiple mediation analysis in study 1 revealed the expected indirect effects of self-compassion on less bedtime procrastination through lower negative affect [b = − .09, 95% CI = (− .20, − .02), but not higher positive affect. Path analysis in study 2 replicated these findings and further demonstrated that cognitive reappraisal explained the lower negative affect linked to self-compassion [b = − .011; 95% CI = (− .025; − .003)]. The direct effect of self-compassion on less bedtime procrastination remained significant. Our novel findings provide preliminary evidence that self-compassionate people are less likely to engage in bedtime procrastination, due in part to their use of healthy emotion regulation strategies that downregulate negative mood

Monitoring Energy Policy

Policy monitoring has been gaining importance in energy and climate gover-nance. It is currently being heralded as a key solution for coordinating energygovernance not only regionally in the emerging Energy Union in the EuropeanUnion (EU), but also globally in the Paris Agreement on climate change. Thecore idea is that transparency through monitoring will incentivize actors to adoptpolicy pathways toward mutually agreed long-term energy and climate policygoals. In addition, monitoring of key indicators (e.g., use of certain kindsof energy), in particular, sectoral contexts, may be a necessary precursor toevaluation and improved regulation. This chapter unpacks the concept of monitoring, reviews the emergence of energy and climate policy monitoring inthe EU, and then details experiences with concrete monitoring regimes in differ-ent settings related to energy and climate policy, ranging from the United Nations(UN) to the EU, as well as nation states and nongovernmental actors. In so doing,it highlights various strands of emerging research and knowledge on monitoringstructures, steering effects and costs, but also the need for further work, especiallyregarding usage and impact. Issues related to politics, coordination, and resourcesare likely to challenge monitoring regimes; further investigation should focus onthe efficacy of monitoring systems, which many assume, but few haveresearched