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Introduction
This essay is based on a book chapter by M. Bovens, P. 'T hart and S. Kuipers
which is titled as The politics of policy evaluation. It is part of a book titled,
The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. This chapter of the book focuses on
the evaluation part of the policy process and has a special focus on the
political side of the evaluation process. The authors explain an important
aspect of public policy that is policy evaluation. It basically talks about how
two different approaches i.e. the rational or positivist and the argumentative
approaches explain the public policy evaluation process. The chapter
explains the view of the two competing school of thoughts and along with
strengths and weaknesses of their argument. The study of different
approaches to policy evaluation gives us an understanding of how different
researchers have used different approaches of policy evaluation in different
periods of time and how effective they have been. In the first section of the
paper, Ill give a summary of the chapter; in the second section, there will be
a discussion of the approaches and arguments used by the authors and
finally the last part will have the critical evaluation of the text.
The first one being the rationalistic or positivist tradition which has a focus
on value neutrality and objective assessments of policy performance. It
advocates an explicit separation of facts and values. Moreover, it ignores all
the political pressures on the policy evaluation process. For the positivists,
the information from policy analysis is assumed to be politically and morally
neutral as information. According to this perspective, information must be
collected that is free from cultural, linguistic and psychological context. Rossi
et al. (1999) also argue that evaluation should provide value-neutral
information to political decision makers. (Rossi, Freeman, & Lipsey, 1999) But
this is their idea of how the information should be. How it actually is can be
in a stark contrast. William Dunn has explained the rationalistic policy
approach as it yields policy-relevant information about the distance of factual
and actual policy performance. According to him, rational methods can be
used to build theoretical policy optimums and these are compared with
actual policy outcomes. (Dunn, 2004) In a rational-analytic approach, policy
evaluation is concerned with a thorough investigation into the
implementation and effects of public policy (Dunn, 2004). In simple words,
the aim of the positivists is to maintain a high degree of objectivity in search
of accurate information and the ultimate truth. This may sound perfect in
theory but the reality might differ as this approach has been criticized by the
argumentative approach followers as an ideal and non-practical approach
which focus more on what should be instead of what it actually is.
Most of the chapter is about the difference between the two major
approaches to evaluation research and whats positive and negative about
these approaches but the focus is on the political aspect in evaluation and
how it affects the process of policy evaluation. According to Bovens et al.,
the very decision to have evaluation for a program or incidence may be part
of a political strategy. It is possible that the process of policy evaluation was
initiated in order to make sure the policy goes on or to change, terminate it.
Marston and Watts argue that there is a risk that evidence-based policy can
be misused by political elites to increase their strategic control over the
nature of problems in policy making (Marston & Watts, 2003). The implication
of this can be seen in the example presented in this chapter. Bovens et al.
use the example of Great societys Head start program to explain how the
post positivists see evaluation. The program was meant for better cognitive
development of the kids who were socially deprived. The first evaluation of
the program found out that the program had failed to achieve one of the
targets. It was just one of the several program and the impact of the
program had to be evaluated after several years not just after one year. But
the Nixon administration ignored the long term impacts of the policy and
used the evaluation as an excuse to discontinue it. Nixon welcomed the
evaluation, cheery picked the program that hadnt shown favorable results
and discontinued the program. This is a good example of how policy
evaluation can be politically motivated or influenced and how it can be used
to change the fate of the policy under consideration. For the rationalists, it
may sound fair as the intended and actual outcomes differed but they fail to
realize the fact that for that specific program, most of the impacts had to be
apparent in the long run and based on the evidence out of just one program
evaluation, the whole policy should not be changed or shifted.
The critics of the rationalist approach argue that the positivist approach to
policy evaluation is distorted by the separation of facts from values. For any
political and social phenomenon, policy evaluation will always be normative
value-laden activity which gives space to a biased evaluation. The
argumentative tradition explicitly incorporates roles of politics in the policy
performances ex-post analysis. (Bovens, 'T hart, & Kuipers, 2006). This
negates the positivist idea that policy evaluations may provide policy makers
with value-neutral objective information for policy improvements. According
to the argumentative perspective, the process of evaluation can never be
value or bias free in practice. This is because of the political side of the
evaluation process. The authors mention another approach which is called
frame-reflection approach. The author doesnt stress on this approach to be
used as a solution to the problems faced by the rationalist and
argumentative approach but mentions it to deal with the bias and value
laden judgement problem in policy evaluation. Schon and Rein mention a
frame-reflection approach to policy evaluation in which the analysts need to
reflect and reassess how they view the world. The key players in the political
arena need to communicate with the analysts using a different set of
assumptions. Reflective policy analysts may strive for a position as a
systematic, well-informed and fair minded provider of inputs to political
process of debate and argumentation that are part of controversial policy
episodes ( Schn & Rein, Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of
Intractable Policy Controversies, 1994).
Critical Evaluation
Although benefit of having contrasting programmatic and political evaluation
modes is that it shows disparities between a policy making entitys political
and programmatic performance. But having different evaluation bodies
competing with each other can also be problematic as theyll be having
diverging and contrasting results. His problem can be huge as it can open
Pandora boxes of more controversies instead of offering an improvement or
reform to the problems faced. The chapter although seemingly in favor of the
argumentative approach, doesnt offer a solution to this problem. Bovens et
al. has explained appropriately the differences between the two major
approaches to policy evaluation. The example of Nixon administrations use
of policy evaluation for political purposes is also appropriate in
understanding the argumentative school of thought. The authors have also
been successful in explaining the political aspect of the policy evaluation and
how it cannot be ignored as the policies always have social and political
aspects. In the chapter, the authors briefly explain the frame-reflection
approach. I think recommending a frame reflection approach as a simple
answer to the complexities of the policy evaluation is not an answer. The
frame-reflection approach has also been criticized by many like Schon and
Rein, who are of the opinion that frame-reflection approach does not always
lead to reframing of issues and the reframing does not always lead to
resolution of issues. ( Schn & Rein, Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution
of, 1994) It is also debatable if a policy evaluator is able to develop a bias-
free frame for reflection or not as the frame reflection approach talks what
should an analyst ideally do, it is debatable if it is actually possible in real
world situations or not.