| Session Title: Rights-based Evaluation and Active Citizenship in Development Contexts |
| Expert Lecture Session 624 to be held in Lone Star C on Friday, Nov 12, 3:35 PM to 4:20 PM |
| Sponsored by the Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Robert Stake, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, stake@uiuc.edu |
| Presenter(s): |
| Saville Kushner, University of the West of England, saville.kushner@uwe.ac.uk |
| Abstract: Evaluation as a response to a citizen’s right to information about public programs is a well-rehearsed idea in wealthy countries of the Northern Hemisphere. It has barely penetrated the field of international development where evaluation is seen as a privileged instrument of the administrative system and the international donor elite. Models of ‘Dialogic’, ‘Participatory’, ‘Responsive’ and ‘Democratic’ Evaluation have a secondary presence to logic models which bend to the needs of Results-Based Management. Evaluation is a widespread practice in developing countries, but is only barely accessible to the citizen, is rarely grounded in their priorities, and equally rarely is reported to them. This lecture – proposed by an ex-UNICEF Regional Adviser and long-time advocate of Democratic and ‘Personalised’ Evaluation - explores the use of evaluation as a redistributive device in a context in which the ‘information-poor’ compete on asymmetrical terms with the ‘information-wealthy’ for knowledge and deliberative engagement on the quality and merits of development programs. |