83 research outputs found
The 'hidden hypothesis'- approach in evaluation methodology: The Swiss participation in the European INTERREG II- Programme
Regional development, and crossborder cooperation in particular, needs feedbacks on the impacts of public policies. Policy evaluation is one appropriate tool. The ?hidden hypothesis'- approach is characterized by two elements: (1) an emphasis on the invisible goals of an evaluated programme or instrument and (2) a strong orientation towards processes of learning and motivation with the actors involved. (1) The formulation of political programmes tends to integrate as much different interests as possible. Such goal-setting processes simplify political agreement. But to evaluate such programmes with all their different and partly conflicting goals creates problems. The quality of an evaluation cannot be better as the quality of the evaluated goals and conflicting goals lead straight forward to conflicting results. (2) Evaluating the results of a political programme is also confronted with problems of measurement. Evaluation methodology normally distinguishes output, impact and outcome of a programme or a project. In general it is very tricky to evaluate the outcome. Thus the presented approach of evaluation works with different logic. The approach aims at enabling the actors concerned to modify and rearrange their activities. The evaluator acts as moderator and gives inputs for the necessary learning processes. This approach can be used especially in intermediate evaluations and monitoring. The case of the Swiss participation to the European INTERREG II- Programme shows a great complexity concerning political goals and concerning the cooperation in a federalistic political structure. Therefore the casestudy is a good example to demonstrate the advantages of the approach: In 1992 the Swiss population voted against joining the European Economic Market Treaty. The narrow rejection by plebiscite lead to intense discussions about the national cohesion. Afterwards the federal strategy to move the country towards an European integration has been based on a piecemeal approach and small projects of crossborder micro-integration. As an important strategic policy instrument the Swiss government decided to contribute to the INTERREG II- Programme of crossborder cooperation with own ressources of co-financing. In this situation the system of goals connected with the participation in INTERREG II is very complex: The different explicite and implicite goals can be categorized by a double dichotomy: On the one hand the tension between the goal of European integration and the goal of (Swiss) regional development. On the other hand the tension between active policy steering and re-active coordinating. Both relationsships are overlapping and influence the administrative levels between central government and the single local project. To evaluate this policy is a work of great complexity. Key words: evaluation methodology, regional crossborder development, INTERREG, Switzerland
The farmer, the worker and the MP: The digital divide and territorial paradoxes in Switzerland
The territorial dimension of the digital divide is usually considered as a phenomenon that penalizes the peripheral regions, especially in terms of regional economic development. Taking into account the territorial networking of ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) infrastructures—particularly high-speed networks—provides what is probably the principal reason for such a perception. This is particularly true considering that the most-peripheral regions and those with the smallest population densities are also the poorest in terms of ICT infrastructures. In Western countries, however, the digital divide is no longer the result of network-related problems. Nowadays, the issue of the skills required to adequately exploit the potential of ICT is at the forefront. Yet this evolution is likely to lead to an inversion of the inequalities between the centre and the periphery, as populations without such skills—recent immigrants, the unemployed, the illiterate, people with little education or on low incomes and other socially marginalized people—are generally concentrated in urban centres. Consequently, the priority for reducing inequalities of access to ICT resources is no longer the provision of high-performance ICT infrastructures for peripheral regions, but rather the implementation of continuing education and social action policies within the urban centre
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