The Role of the Evaluator in a Political World

Abstract

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Ernest House has continuously stressed the moral responsibility of evaluators. His social activist perspective has time and again alerted us to the dangers of being seduced by the agendas of those in power. (It was this stance that made him a particularly appropriate keynote speaker for Saskatchewan’s first CES annual conference; he is well versed in Saskatchewan’s history of co-operatives and social initiatives.) In his keynote address, he points out that the current political climate in the United States presents a threat to the independence and utility of evaluation, that is, the threat of becoming a servant of the power elite. Using Janice Gross Stein’s analysis of the cult of efficiency, he shows how political fundamentalism and methodological fundamentalism are intimately linked. As he wrote over 25 years ago in his monograph The Logic of Evaluative Argument (1977): “There are those who try to force simplicity atop the complexities of life and thereby eradicate ambiguity ... Often in positions of power, they impose arbitrary definitions of reality for the sake of action” (p. 47).