The Institutionalisation of Evaluation in Europe PDF Download

Author: Reinhard Stockmann
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303032284X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
This book examines the progress of institutionalisation of evaluation in European countries from various perspectives. It describes both prior developments and current states of evaluation in 16 European countries and across the European Union (EU), focussing on three dimensions, namely the political, social and professional systems. These detailed country reports, which have been written by selected researchers and authors from each of the respective countries, lead to a concluding comparison and synthesis. This is the first of four volumes of the compendium The Institutionalisation of Evaluation to be followed by volumes on the Americas, Africa and Australasia. The overall aim is to provide an interdisciplinary audience with cross-country learning to enable them to better understand the institutionalisation of evaluation in different nations, world regions and different sectors.

Author: Marlène Läubli Loud
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 148331071X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Enhancing Evaluation Use: Insights from Internal Evaluation Units offers invaluable insights from real evaluators who share strategies they have adopted through their own experiences in evaluation. Readers will learn about the challenges, solutions, and lessons drawn from the experience of evaluators working in a wide range of organizations. Referencing the latest literature, contributors discuss factors that help or undermine attempts to foster an evaluative thinking and learning culture within an organization. Applicable in a wide range of situations, their accounts demonstrate the initiative and innovative thinking they use to address challenges in various, sometimes complex, evaluation settings. Questions at the end of each chapter stimulate thought and discussions about the issues raised and allow readers to apply their findings to their own situations. “This book speaks to a cutting-edge topic, that is, the potential to generalize program evaluation expertise to larger organizational questions, and the cases from multiple international contexts represent a unique feature.” —John Clayton Thomas, Georgia State University “The use of actual cases to highlight major concepts in evaluation in the public sector is a great feature.” —Danica G. Hays, Old Dominion University “The text provides practical information from a variety of organizational contexts and the integration of international experiences provides for expanded discussion of evaluation theory and practice.” —Kathleen Norris, Plymouth State University “The key strengths of this book lie in its national, supra-national and international organizational contexts, its consistency in insider perspectives, and the detailed examples provided.” —Donna Haig Friedman, University of Massachusetts, Boston EVALUATION IN ORGANIZATIONS: A BOOK REVIEW by Robert Picciotto, UKES Council Member (Excerpted) "The book of essays reviewed here was edited by two eminent evaluators. It fills an important gap in the literature: in pursuit of improved quality of evaluation products, evaluation thinkers have lavished attention on evaluation methods, ethics and use but they have sorely neglected evaluation governance issues and have largely failed to probe the workings of evaluation within organizations. All contributors to the book are seasoned practitioners. They hail from national, supranational and international organizations and many of them have trespassed across these thematic and organizational boundaries. They all are equipped to draw on a vast reservoir of hands--on experience as evaluation commissioners, managers, internal evaluators or external practitioners. Given its pragmatic focus the book is bound to elicit broad based interest among evaluation practitioners. While it addresses familiar dilemmas and challenges (evaluation independence, evaluation utilization, organizational learning, nurturing of an evaluation culture, etc.) it does so from the distinctive perspective of “insiders” who have had to contend with a variety of organizational constraints and management pressures. [It] should be of practical value to teachers, students, professional evaluators as well as evaluation commissioners and programme managers. All in all, this is a book that belongs on your shelf if you are intent on enhancing the role that evaluation plays in your organization."

Author: Steve Jacob
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9789052010786
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : fr
Pages : 278

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Book Description
A travers une comparaison des situations observées dans 4 pays, cet ouvrage présente les configurations institutionnelles mises en place pour favoriser l'essor de la pratique évaluative. L'auteur s'attache aux principales caractéristiques des systèmes politiques et administratifs, ainsi qu'aux éléments de nature conjoncturelle tels que la lutte contre les déficits publics.

Author: Jonathan Verschuuren
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004170200
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Around the globe, ex ante evaluation of legislation has become an established rationalisation of legislative processes. Legislators, politicians, and the public at large increasingly demand new laws to have a particular effect and no unwanted side effects. Various instruments are being applied that all have in common that they must predict the effect of new legislation. Until now, most publications on regulatory impact assessment praise such instruments as being extremely useful. Scepticism, however, is in order as well. Is it not as difficult to predict the future effect of a new set of rules in our complex society as it is to predict where our society as a whole is going? The search for an answer to this sceptical question is at the heart of the book. The newly established Research Group for Methodology of Law and Legal Research at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) brought together some of Europe s top specialists in the field of ex ante evaluation of legislation, with backgrounds in law, social science, political science, and law and economics. The result of their collaborative effort is a comprehensive and critical book on the pros and cons and on the opportunities, limitations, and challenges of ex ante assessment of legislation.

Author: Anjo G. Harryvan
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9789052014975
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
As one of the six founding member-states of the European Union, the Netherlands has been at the heart of the European integration project from its inception. Looking back on the Netherlands' role in European cooperation and integration during the 1950s and 1960s, Joseph Luns, the country's long-standing Foreign Minister, depicted himself as an exponent of a «Dutch vision». This vision, Luns suggested, enabled the country to act as a leading force in Europe, thus demonstrating that in specific constellations in international affairs, a middle-sized or even a small country can play an important role. What was this «Dutch vision» of Europe and was Luns right in ascribing so much importance to it? In this book, the author sets out to investigate whether, under which conditions and by what means the Netherlands has exerted an «engineering influence» on the economic and institutional architecture of the European Union. It sheds fresh light on the policies of the Netherlands and its Benelux partners in the process of making Europe as we know it today. Achieving the Common Market may well be considered the ultimate success of contemporary Dutch diplomacy.

Author: Jean-Claude Barbier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351296868
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Evaluation Cultures draws upon a sample of reflections, drawn from organizational practices, nationally centered political cultures, and ethnic cultures, as a framework for understanding how culture influences the work of evaluation. Two main conclusions seem to emerge: first, that there exists no single, uniform, and homogenous national evaluation culture; second, that the idea of a unified transnational culture of evaluation is an illusion.The evaluation community includes a diverse group of professionals; a diversity that is not just represented in national or ethnic culture but also in academic backgrounds, public and private sector allegiances, and personal character. The contributors to this book represent, in part, this diversity by reflecting a range of views.Evaluation Cultures draws upon the experience of senior evaluation practitioners, who share their reflections on their practice and experience, in order to put forth challenges to purely academic analysis. Evaluation Cultures presents a consistent, if not exhaustive, attempt to give analytical and empirical sense to all of the cultures of the evaluation community.

Author: Jean-Michel Eymeri-Douzans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136749500
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
After a quarter of a century of implementation of New Public Management (NPM) reform strategies, this book assesses the major real outcomes of these reforms on states and public sectors, at both the organisational level and a more political level. Unlike most previous accounts of reform, this book looks at how reform has changed the role of the public administration in democratic governance. Featuring case studies on the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Post communist states, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and the European Commission, and focusing on two issues this book: Examines the significant variations in the "trajectories" of administrative reform among West European countries on the basis of empirically rooted research on different national case studies. Assesses the extent to which these "constitutive" public policies have affected the institutions of government and the governing processes of our democratic occidental states and ask how have NPM-inspired programs, with their exclusive focus on managerialist objectives and instruments, challenged the political and democratic nature of public administration? Looking at the broader issues relating to the current recompositions of democratic states, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of all matters relating to public administration and governance within political science, management, public law, sociology, contemporary history, and cultural studies.

Author: Giles Scott-Smith
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9789052012568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Exchange programmes have been a part of US foreign relations since the nineteenth century, but it was only during and after World War II that they were applied by the US government on a large scale to influence foreign publics in support of strategic objectives. This book looks at the background, organisation, and goals of the Department of State's most prestigious activity in this field, the Foreign Leader Program. The Program (still running as the International Visitor Leadership Program) enabled US Embassies to select and invite talented, influential 'opinion leaders' to visit the United States, meet their professional counterparts, and gain a broad understanding of American attitudes and opinions from around the country. By tracking the operation of the Program in three key transatlantic allies of the United States a full picture is given of who was selected and why, and how the target groups changed over time in line with a developing US-European relationship. The book therefore takes a unique in-depth look at the importance of exchanges for the extension of US 'informal empire' and the maintenance of the transatlantic alliance during the Cold War.

Author: Paul Quinn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351470566
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book demonstrates the difficulties the law is likely to encounter in regulating the expressive activities of the state, particularly with regard to the stigmatization of vulnerable groups and minorities. Freedom of speech is indispensable to a democratic society, enabling it to operate with a healthy level of debate and discussion. Historically, legal scholars have underappreciated the power of stigmatization, instead focusing on anti-discrimination law, and the implicit assumption that the state is permitted to communicate freely with little fear of legal consequences. Whilst integral to a democratic society, the freedom of a state to express itself can however also be corrosive, allowing influential figures and organizations the possibility to stigmatize vulnerable groups within society. The book takes this idea and, uniquely weaving legal analysis with extant psychological and sociological research, shows that current legal approaches to stigmatization are limited. Starting with a deep insight into what constitutes state expressions and how they can become stigmatizing, the book then goes on to look into the capacity the law currently has to limit these expressions and asks even if it could, should it? This fascinating study of an increasingly topical subject will be of interest to any legal scholar working in the field of freedom of expression and discrimination law.

Author: Alfonso Martínez Arranz
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9789052016047
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The EU has long played a central role in promoting economic prosperity and political stability in Europe. With twenty-seven countries, it is a powerful trade negotiator and is seen by many as a growing force for global security and welfare. But does the EU giant have feet of clay? Is it recognized as a legitimate political and social project by its own citizens? How well does it respond to global challenges, such as environmental degradation and terrorism? How successful is it in projecting its image as a promoter of human rights, of conflict prevention, social justice, development cooperation, environmental protection and multilateralism? This volume contributes to the debate about the changing face of Europe and the way it works, not just internally, but also with the rest of the world. It first explores the merits of fostering inclusive multicultural citizenship and religious pluralism in Europe, the necessity of reinventing the EU from below, and the urgency of addressing EU internal migration problems. It then examines the new role of the EU in world politics and how other countries view it in terms of hard and soft power. Can the EU inspire by its development aid, conflict prevention, social and audiovisual policies? How efficient is it in exporting security to the rest of the world? The final chapters deal with the EU in the Asia Pacific region.