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

Performance Management Uses, Outcome Measures and Mechanisms-Based Explanations. The Case of the Judicial Sector

This paper chapter analyses the different meanings of the concept of performance management utilisation, using empirical evidence from the Italian judiciary system. Managerial and evaluation literature on the ‘uses’ of performance information suggests that each use is sustained by specific causal mechanisms, i.e. strategies of actors that can explain – in specific contexts – the reasons for the success of the performance measurement. Empirical evidences for this view are derived from two case studies involving offices of the Italian judicial sector. The judicial sector has been selected because it is at the centre of an interesting debate over the value of the paradigm shift from output to outcome measure

Switzerland

Evaluation in Switzerland is well established, with diverse institutions and practices that have progressed strongly since the 1990s. The level of evaluation activity is constantly high, educational and training programmes are in place, the Swiss Evaluation Society SEVAL is highly committed, and Swiss scholars contribute regularly to the international debate. While this is remarkable in many respects, evaluation in Switzerland still shows significant weaknesses, of which two are particularly important: First, how evaluations are designed remains very heterogeneous in the country. Second, efforts to professionalise evaluation in Switzerland have to be viewed with scepticism. There are still numerous evaluations, carried out by laypersons, which contain grave weaknesses. In trying to counteract, the evaluation community has adopted a strategy of bureaucratic routinisation and closing off the market. This ignores that for evaluation to continue to flourish, it absolutely needs to involve a lively exchange between practitioners and social scientific research