We are Ian Goldman (President of the IEAc, Advisor Global Evaluation Initiative), Candice Morkel (IEAc Board member and Director CLEAR Anglophone Africa, Edoe Dimitrij Agbodjan (Director CLEAR Francophone Africa) and Thokozile Molaiwa (Chief Director: Evaluation, Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, South Africa). In today’s post, we build upon a seminar organised by the Academy on 1 November, and a forthcoming paper for the African Evaluation Journal.
Western models of economy and society are leading us to ecological and social justice catastrophe. New thinking is needed to create societies which are regenerative and more just – a tall order when men of war seek to divert us, and the global response needed is diverted by a multilateral system in crisis.
We are all people working with promoting not only evaluation but national evaluation systems (NESs), primarily in Africa but also more widely. We are all seized by the question of how we can make evaluation more relevant to the polycrisis facing us, but what does that mean for the way we set up evaluation systems in countries – so that evaluation become systematised as part of public management, but in ways that do not just support an unsustainable status quo, but help us to promote the transformation the world needs to regain planetary health and social justice. All too often, the work on evaluation systems seeks to copy models from elsewhere, often a form of isomorphic mimicry (copying), which does not help promote the regenerative world we need.
We have built on the special edition of the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation on decolonisation of evaluation to help us think this through. We particularly built on Beverly Parsons and Katie Winters paper on social-ecological systems and one by Hassnain. Machine-based systems have competing interests, benefits and values (which have to be negotiated), and the dynamics of the system are linear. Ecology-based systems are seen as ‘open to the flow of energy and matter; networked; and evolving, emergent, self-organizing’ (boundaries and interrelationships), and so helpful in times of complex change (Parsons and Winters: 38).
This makes us question how we can rebalance NESs with solid machine elements which provide predictability, transparency, minimum standards and a degree of stability but with ecological dimensions which promote the involvement of multiple stakeholders, flexibility, interdependence and a responsiveness to local users and places.
Lessons Learned
We have used a new institutionalism[1] lens to understand isomorphism and identify levers to provide new ways of thinking about building strong and effective state-led evaluation systems. We have applied this to thinking about South Africa and Benin’s national evaluation systems, two of three countries in Africa with NESs (the other being Uganda).
We argue for: (1) embracing the peer learning and emergent approaches which we see in both countries, widening this to more systematically involve civil society; (2) embracing principles of participatory democracy and co-production by strengthening the voice of non-state actors, particularly citizens, in the formation and running of NESs as well as in individual evaluations; (3) doing what is necessary to challenge the existing power dynamics inherent in the evaluator (and/or donor) /evaluand relationship so that evaluations are context-specific, sensitive to felt needs, and help to shift power from above, to power from below, 4) Contributing to a change of evaluator mindset and leadership culture which is less autocratic, more inclusive and empowering, and more learning focused.
We argue that the confluence of these actions will transform NESs in such a way as to circumvent the limitations of the routinisation of evaluation production and move systems to include wider voices, evolve more effectively, and address the systemic challenges facing these countries.
If interested to pursue these issues contact Viviana Lascano, the IEAc Coordinator, at coordinator@ieac.global.
[1] Eg see March, J.G. & Olsen, J.P., 2009, ‘Elaborating the “new institutionalism”’, In S. Binder, R.A.W. Rhodes & B.A. Rockman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of political institutions. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199548460.001.0001
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