Democratic Knowledge Production as a Contribution to Objectivity in the Evaluation of Development NGOs

Abstract

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) occupy an increasingly significant role in international development aid. In tandem with their increasing significance, demands for showing effects and impacts by means of rigorous, most recently experimentalist, evaluation practices have been made; especially by international donors who channel a remarkable portion of their development aid budget through NGOs. The current mainstream evaluation used by NGOs is based on logical framework approaches, which subscribe to measurability and objectivity in evaluation. There has been substantial criticism of such approaches for not being adequate in the context of complex and uncertain development situations. Furthermore, these methods tend to work against NGOs' own value commitments. In this article, we argue for a methodological middle road in terms of the contemporary epistemological and ethical debate. We base our argument on pragmatist philosophy, which considers democratic knowledge production as a contribution to objectivity. We propose a pragmatist approach for the phenomena of evaluations in NGOs, while acknowledging and treating the challenge of power relations in such an evaluation.