Government and Evaluation

The degree of interest in evaluation shown by governments, where evaluation is seen as a systematic assessment of government interventions, can be explained by a number of factors. One of the overall preconditions for the occurrence of evaluation is a democratic system. Even though democracy is neither a sufficient nor necessary factor for conducting evaluations, it is still a very important one, at least for some comprehensive types of evaluation. It is, for example, difficult to imagine evaluations that question government programs on the basis of their aim and relevance or an independent (free from government oversight) evaluation of programs in monolithic societies such as some communist countries.

Another general overall observation is that, with one or two exceptions (for example, the United States), governments and ...