Reframing Social Cohesion: Lessons from Public Sector Evaluations

Abstract

There is a disjuncture between the way social cohesion is understood, and the way government programming has been designed to promote it. As public sector monitoring and evaluation systems expand, and social cohesion has been recognised as a pillar of South Africa's National Development Plan, building consensus on how to measure the most salient components of social cohesion is an important step to supporting more effective and targeted programme development. This article will discuss which indicators measure the condition of social cohesion (e.g. trust, interaction, attitudes towards diversity, equality and participation) as well as the importance of measuring indicators for causal factors and context factors. Through specific examples within public sector programming, the paper looks at the potential to better integrate social cohesion in government programming, and reflect a more accurate conceptualisation of social cohesion principles in public sector results based monitoring and evaluation.