1st Edition
Evaluation in the Post-Truth World
Evaluation in the Post-Truth World explores the relationship between the nature of evaluative knowledge, the increasing demand in decision-making for evaluation and other forms of research evidence, and the post-truth phenomena of antiscience sentiments combined with illiberal tendencies of the present day. Rather than offer a checklist on how to deal with post-truth, the experts found herein wish to raise awareness and reflection throughout policy circles on the factors that influence our assessment and policy-related work in such a challenging environment. Journeying alongside the editor and contributors, readers benefit from three guiding questions to help identify specific challenges but tools to deal with such challenges: How are policy problems conceptualized in the current political climate? What is the relationship between expertise and decision-making in today’s political circumstances? How complex has evaluation become as a social practice?
Evaluation in the Post-Truth World will benefit evaluation practitioners at the program and project levels, as well as policy analysts and scholars interested in applications of evaluation in the public policy domain.
Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 11 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Foreword
Introduction
Mita Marra, Karol Olejniczak, and Arne Paulson
1. Co-creating Evaluation for Policy Relevance: The Challenges of the Post-Truth World
Mita Marra
2. Free Trade, Populism, and Post-Truth – An Evaluation Perspective
R. Pablo Guerrero O.
3. Evidence as Enlightenment versus Evidence as Certainty: Appropriate Uses of Evaluative Information to Inform Policy in a Post-Truth World
Richard Boyle and Sean Redmond
4. Lies and Politics: Until Death Do Us Part …
Steve Jacob and Jeanne Milot-Poulin
5. Heuristics and Biases in the nPost-Truth Era—A Piece of Advice for Policy-Makers
Jakub Krawiec and Paweł Śliwowski
6. In Search of Effective Communication with Decision-Makers for the Post-Truth Era: Discourse Strategies from Pre-Imperial China
Karol Olejniczak and Marcin Jacoby
7. Do Citizens even want to hear the truth?: Public Attitudes toward Evidence-Informed Policymaking
Pirmin Bundi and Valérie Pattyn
8. Sustaining Momentum for Evidence-Informed Policymaking: The Case of the US Government
Nicholas Hart and Kathryn Newcomer
9. Participatory Budgeting, Evaluation, and the Post-Truth World: Where Are We, and Where Do We Go from Here?
Yaerin Park
10. Evidence Use in a Post-Truth World: A Unique Opportunity for Evaluators?
Steffen Bohni Nielsen and Sebastian Lemire
Conclusions: Some suggestions for evaluators’ daily work in a post-truth world
Karol Olejniczak, Mita Marra, and Arne Paulson
Biography
Mita Marra is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Naples in Italy. She also taught at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University (2016–2021), at Maastricht University (2006) and within the International Program of Development Evaluation (IPDET, 2016–2018). Mita Marra has a PhD in Public Policy from the George Washington University, an MA in International Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Economics at the University of Naples Federico II, in Italy. Her current research interests revolve around public sector governance and policy evaluation in the field of regional development, innovation, and gender equality. Dr Marra has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Evaluation, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, and European Urban and Regional Studies. Dr Marra is Editor-in-Chief for the international peer-reviewed journal Evaluation and Program Planning (2015–present), past president of the Italian Evaluation Association (AIV, 2013–2017), and a current member of the Board of the European Evaluation Society, and the Council of the International Evaluation Academy.
Karol Olejniczak is Associate Professor of Public Policy at SWPS University, Warsaw, Poland, and co-founder of the Polish policy research company, Evaluation for Government Organizations (EGO s.c.). He was an Ostrom Policy Analysis Workshop fellow (2006), Kosciuszko Foundation fellow (2012), and Fulbright fellow (2021). Dr. Olejniczak’s work focuses on the intersection of policy design and evaluation, and the use of evidence in decision-making. In his research and teaching, he utilizes games, experiments, and behavioral design. He has published the six-volume series Ministerstwa Uczace Sie (Learning Ministries), and articles in scientific journals such as the American Journal of Evaluation, Policy Design and Practice, and Policy & Politics.
Arne Paulson pursued a career in international development, working as an economist in a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, UNCTAD (Geneva), the International Energy Agency (Paris), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), from which he retired in 2007. At the IDB, he worked in all aspects of evaluation, including ex-ante economic evaluation, ongoing monitoring of projects in execution, and ex-post evaluation of completed projects financed by the IDB. At the corporate level, he reported on the overall development effectiveness of IDB operations to the bank’s board of directors and at international conferences.
This book profoundly faces the tension between social science/evaluation and the world of lies, distortions, and un-truths. Whether addressing Brexit or Trump, this book does not shy away from the confrontation of these two forces playing out in countries across the globe. As the editors see it, we are now in the midst of "the death of expertise" as emotions lure people and politicians more than facts and evidence do. One of the brilliantly addressed tensions in the book is that between knowledge and power. The tensions are manageable, especially if there are safeguards erected by democratic institutions. But when these safeguards are challenged or eroded, as in the times we are presently experiencing, democracy becomes more fragile and frail. The ten chapters in this volume focus on democratic countries and their public policy decision-making for two reasons: First, the democratic environment is the most common arena for the evaluative function; and second, the post-truth phenomenon is most visible in the democratic space.
Ray C. Rist, Former Senior Advisor (Retired), The World Bank
Like many others, I have been puzzled by the increasing tension between the discrediting of science and expertise on the one hand, and the pressure for evidence-based policymaking, on the other hand. This tension is the focus of this book, which has been initiated and written during the last turbulent years with Trump, COVID and the Ukraine war. The aim of the book is to raise awareness and provoke reflections on the factors that influence evaluations and policy-related work in such challenging environments. The first part deals with the relationship between policy problems and evaluation, the second with the relationship between politics and expertise, and the third with the complexity of evaluation in the institutional and political systems. The underlying conviction is that for an evaluating society to flourish, citizens and professionals have to develop a capacity to be inquisitive, systematic in their inquiry, judicious in their claims, truth seeking, analytical, intellectually humble, sympathetic to opposing points of view, self-critical, and open-minded— not simply open-minded in the sense of being tolerant of other points of view, but open-minded in the sense of recognizing the challenges to one’s own way of seeing things that arise from others’ ways of making distinctions of worth.
Per Oyvind Bastøe, International Evaluation Adviser, Formerly Evaluation Director and Chair of OECD/DAC Evaluation Network
