Analyse and rule? A conceptual framework for explaining the variable appeals of ex-ante evaluation in policymaking

This article integrates disparate explanations for increasing (but variable) turns to ex-ante policy evaluation, such as risk analysis, across public administrations. So far unconnected silos of literature – on policy tools, policy instrumentation, the politics of evaluation and the political sociology of quantification – inconsistently portray ex-ante evaluation as rational problem-solving, symbolic actions of institutional self-defence, or (less often) political power-seeking. I synthesise these explanations in an interpretivist and institutionalist reading of ex-ante evaluation as contextually filtered process of selective meaning-making. From this methodological umbrella emerges my unified typology of ex-ante evaluation as instrumental problemsolving (I), legitimacy-seeking (L) and powerseeking (P). I argue that a) these ideal-types coexist in policymakers’ reasoning about the expected merits of ex-ante evaluation, whilst b) diverse institutional contexts will favour variable weightings of I, L and P in policymaking. By means of systematisation the typology seeks to inspire an interdisciplinary research agenda on varieties of ex-ante evaluation.