Hi, I am Jeanette Asencio Tocol, Senior MEL Manager of EarthRights International and the current co-chair of the Democracy, Rights and Governance (DRG) Topical Interest Group. I am so proud to be introducing the DRG week blogs.
The DRG TIG is founded on the shared principle of democracy (among others), which applies not only in the substantive areas of the DRG work but also in the approaches and methods we employ in our evaluations. The DRG TIG’s contributions to AEA 365 this week are grounded on principles that make evaluation democratic: (1) that evaluations create space for communication about critical issues from the perspective of different stakeholder groups (and not just solely represent a singular view); (2) that evaluations address power imbalance and ensure that knowledge is “democratized,”; and (3) that the evaluation theory and approaches reflect democratic values such as participation, inclusion, deliberation and dialogue.
Why apply democratic principles in evaluation?
- Evaluation can be a powerful method for democratizing knowledge and ensuring equity and inclusion. This week’s post on improvements in the governance and service delivery of sub-national governments resulting from outcome harvesting done in Nigeria (Ponge and Karimi); and incorporating MEL strategies that advance social inclusion and equity in DRG programs (Ropajeva, Ware, Rodriguez, Kozma, and Mundt) provide insight and useful tips and resources on this.
- Democratic evaluation promotes dialogue and deliberation, and builds the power of people to assess effectiveness and quality of program efforts and develop recommendations themselves. Posts on Ripple Effect Mapping (REM) combined with Most Significant change (MSC) in evaluating nuanced results in democracy and governance programs (Chen, Diggs, and Godbole) and the use of Deliberative Democratic Evaluation with Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) in addressing multistakeholderism (Jersild, Harner) provide examples of evaluation methods that employ democratic principles.
- Sharing DRG research and evaluation findings, especially among evaluators, encourages learning across stakeholder groups and deepens practitioners’ understanding around especially complex and nuanced issues in the DRG sector. This week’s posts on evaluation-informed adaptation (Barrowman) and designing and evaluating rapid responses to democratic erosion (Stern) provides results of lessons sharing fora and learning derived from these processes.
Rad Resources
- The Evaluation Exchange issue on Democratic Evaluation
- Better Evaluation’s page on Democratic Evaluation
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Democracy, Human Rights and Governance TIG Week with our colleagues in the Democracy, Human Rights and Governance Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our DRG TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.