2000/04/01 by Lars Carlsson · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · #Public Policy and Administration Research #Evaluation and Performance Assessment #Policy Transfer and Learning #Rationality #Politics #Order (exchange) #Postmodernism #Power (physics) #Process (computing) #Task (project management) #Policy analysis #Sociology #Positive economics #Political science #Management science #Epistemology #Computer science #Public administration #Economics #Management #Law
paper · doi:10.1177/13563890022209217
openalex publication_date 2000/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
An important task for policy evaluation is to develop methods that are based on the fact that political power is fragmented and that every policy area is complex. This article demonstrates, using an empirical example, how different strands of the policymaking process are related to different logics of evaluation. Also discussed is how these differences may result in quite opposite conclusions about the possible failure or success of single programmes. However, it is concluded that policy research does not have to abandon the idea of rationality and adopt a more postmodern or hermeneutic line of analysis. Policy evaluation is still, it is argued, a matter of finding relevant units of analysis, and in contemporary society these units are networks rather than political–administrative entities. Thus, in order to be able to scrutinize and understand such processes of policy creation, policy evaluation must adopt a non-hierarchical attitude and this requires a bottom-up methodology.