Abstract
AbstractHere we present a critical exploration of evaluation as a concept within a state‐led social policy programme. Studies critiquing this type of evaluation often assume its purpose is to provide knowledge and understanding of a given social policy, and its relative impact upon the social issue towards which it has been directed. However, drawing on the accounts of 25 community development workers gathered over the course of a 17 year state‐led, anti‐poverty programme (2001–2018), and building on existing critique of evaluation methodologies, we argue that evaluation is also instrumental in the reinforcement of hierarchical power relations between state and civil society. To develop this argument, evaluation is discussed in three related ways pertaining to hierarchy: (a) firstly, as a means of defining and ultimately producing (contested) constructions of value; (b) secondly, as a mechanism for securing forms of vertical accountability; (c) and finally, through its construction as a lost saviour: an entity with untapped potential for safeguarding the integrity of an initial political ideology. In this way, narratives from those working on the ground extend our understanding of the complexities and dualities embedded within evaluation. In light of this analysis, we argue for a more inclusive approach to evaluation practices, and the development of alternative heterarchies in the evaluation of social policy premised on processes of co‐production and collaboration.
Highlights
The past 10 years have seen a growth in critique of evaluation as a concept in the field of social and public policy (Lamont, 2012, 2017; Lamont, Beljean, & Clair, 2014; Prior, 2008; Timmermans & Epstein, 2010)
Such analyses are positioned in direct opposition to the new public management (NPM) and to a lesser extent public administration, as cultural phenomena within public services with strong implications for evaluation practices (Espeland & Sauder, 2007; Newman, 2005; Osborne, 2006; Power, 1997). Here are those elements of NPM that emerge in the evaluation of a state-led social policy programme, namely: the adoption of private-sector management approaches within public sector operations; the distancing between policy makers and policy implementation; the decentralisation of management authority within public agencies; and the subsequent individualisation of responsibility for policy delivery (Osborne, 2006, p. 379; Pollitt, 1995, p. 134). We extend these arguments by drawing on empirical data, which suggests that the process of evaluation does not identify success, attribute accountability for failure, or prescribe solutions; but can serve to reinforce hierarchical relations between state and civil society, or the hierarchy of command in governance (Jessop 2002)
Evaluation was rationalised by development workers as a form of vertical accountability, ‘distancing’ between state and community by reducing communication to a one-way transmission made on the evaluator's terms
Summary
The past 10 years have seen a growth in critique of evaluation as a concept in the field of social and public policy (Lamont, 2012, 2017; Lamont, Beljean, & Clair, 2014; Prior, 2008; Timmermans & Epstein, 2010). Particular evaluation methodologies, can be considered a form of governmentality whereby state power is ubiquitous within, in this case, a given social policy (Foucault, 1980) and embedded within the process of evaluation itself In this way, Larner and Butler (2005) argue, evaluations are not neutral tools but governmental techniques that ‘represent and help constitute governmental spaces and subjects in particular forms’ The crucial difference lies in the object under scrutiny and by extension the purpose of the scrutiny In this case, and in broad terms, the external evaluations scrutinised government policy while the internal evaluation scrutinised the work of those delivering it. Some background to the external evaluation of Communities First is given
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