In the first section of this book, four chapters explore how
evaluation can influence and interact with the change process in policy
and institutional development. Wijayatilake recalls a convincing and
riveting story about how evaluation was introduced in Sri-Lanka and
what kind of striking results could be achieved in a few years through
a progressive pragmatic approach and strong leadership. Wiesner reviews
the role of evaluation in the formation of macroeconomic policy in
Latin America and outlines the role of demand for improved results and
performance and of the accountability from the politicians, the private
sector and civil society and, in the end, the population. Dimitrov
proposes a 7 step approach for tacking institutional Performance
evaluation and applies it to the case of the Black Sea Trade and
Development Bank. Jaljouli addresses the challenge of the integration
of development strategy and the evaluation process and uses Dubai as a
case study.
In the second section of this book, five chapters present a variety
of lessons learnt and good practices in Evaluation Capacity Building
(ECB). Heider presents a structured approach to capacity development
working at three levels: individual training, institutional
development, and an enabling environment and suggests moving from
capacities to capabilities. Agrawal and Rao identify various factions
influencing the use of evaluation results and show in the case of India
how capacity building was used to increase this use. Andriantseheno
addresses how an M and E system for a major development program can be
set up as part of a programmatic approach using the case study of the
Environment/Rural Development and Food Security program in Madagascar.
Porter outlines the potential of the helping approaches an evaluation
capacity development strategy and uses the Bana Barona/Abantwanu Bethu
project in South Africa to prove his point. Clotteau et al. review
major challenges in ECB and present a variety of ECB strategies to
design and implement Results-Based National M and E systems, building
upon a number of experiences in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The third section of the book discusses new perspectives on ECB.
Picciotto outlines a path for the future of development evaluation on
the basis of a review of emerging endogenous and exogenous trends. By
surveying recent theoretical developments in ECB, Nielsen and Attström
map the perspectives offered by the contributors in terms of scope,
purpose, definitions, and methods and relate key findings and
recommendations to the ECB framework offered by Heider’ chapter.
Van den Berg illustrates how evaluation capacity has been developed and
could be further developed in a critical area for the future, i.e. in
environment and development. From a review of the first and second
sections of the book, Dahlgren underlines that building up evaluation
capacity requires not only competence and quality, but taking into
account the political and institutional context, cost aspects, the
relative importance between learning and accountability, and the
differences and similarities between monitoring and evaluation.
Finally, following a review of the same papers, McAllister explores the
interface between the evaluation function and organizational leadership
in setting results strategy and the limitation of results approaches as
implemented by the international development community. Overall, the
stimulating comparative analysis of the papers presented in sections 1
and 2, questions and own thoughts on perspectives for ECB in the future
made by those senior evaluation specialists allow for a more thorough
and nuanced book.
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