Integrating evaluation units into the political environment of government: The role of evaluation policy

Abstract Most discussions of evaluation policy focus on the substance and process of doing evaluations. However, doing evaluations in government requires careful consideration not only of evaluation but also of the larger political structure into which it is expected to fit. I argue in this chapter that success for evaluation in government depends as much on the political context within which evaluation operates as it does on the merits of the evaluation process itself. For convenience, I divide the contextual governmental pressures on evaluation into three kinds: those stemming from the overarching structure of our democracy, those stemming from the bureaucratic climate of a particular agency, and those stemming from the dominant professional culture within that agency. I then examine how those three kinds of pressures have, in my experience, affected the independence, credibility, and ethical position of the evaluation units and evaluators concerned. Finally, I offer some suggestions for evaluation policy in the hope of avoiding a repetition of past evaluative failures that resulted either from unawareness of political relationships in government or from the inability of small evaluation units to protect their work in the face of much more powerful political forces. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.