The Power of Commissioning Enabling Democratic Evaluation

Foreword
Ray Rist

1. Commissioning Matters: Considerations and Challenges for Evaluation Commissioners Who Intend to Promote Democracy
Nicoletta Stame and María Bustelo

I. Commissioning (with democratic principles) matters

2. How to Make Commissioning Matter in Times of Complex Fast-Changing Reality
Burt Perrin and Nicoletta Stame
3. How Evaluation Commissioning Processes Can Support or Undermine Democratic Processes
Patricia Rogers and Steve Montague
4. Commissioning with Clarity: Empowering Democratic Spaces by Drawing on the Principles of Deliberative Democracy
Tom Ling & Ananda Millard
5. How Evaluation Commissioners and Evaluators Can Collaboratively Move Equitable Evaluation from a Set of External Actions to Internal Practices
Drew Koleros, Monique Liston & Ray McGhee 

II. Experiences of Commissioning in Different Institutional Contexts

6. The Influence of Context for Different Types of Commissioners of Evaluation: Challenges and Opportunities
Tessie Catsambas
7. Democracy, SDGs, Evaluation and Commissioners – Connecting the Dots
Robert Lahey & Dorothy Lucks
8. Learning Agendas - From Studies to Streams of Evidence
Karol Olejniczak, Tomasz Kupiec & Yaerin Park
9. Democratic Implications of Commissioning Market-Based Evaluations: Insights from Italy’s Cohesion Policy
Mita Marra & Virginio Buscemi
10. Evaluation Management Services at the MFA of Finland
Sari Laaksonen & Markus Palenberg
11. The Art of Commissioning: Lessons from Commissioner-Evaluator Collaboration
Ida Lindkvist & Robert Lloyd

III. Educating the Commissioner, Through a Dialogue Between Commissioners and Evaluators

12.The Good Commissioner: Competencies for Enhancing Democracy in Commissioning Processes
Maria Bustelo, Ramón Crespo & Juan Andrés Ligero
13. Training for Critical Evaluative Thinking
Per Øyvind Bastøe, Øyunn Syrstad Høydal & Knut Fossestøl
14. Academy of Evaluation – A Capacity-Building Initiative for Commissioning Authorities
Karol Olejniczak, Piotr Strzęboszewski & Marlena Stępień
15. Democratic Evaluation Commissioning: Lessons from Theory and Practice
María Bustelo & Nicoletta Stame

Appendix: Applying insights from the model of the Neo-Weberian State to commission more democratic and valuable evaluations
Alison Pollard

Index

Biography

Nicoletta Stame retired as Professor of Social Policy at “Sapienza” University of Rome. She is a past president of the Italian Evaluation Association and of the European Evaluation Society and associate editor of Evaluation.  Nicoletta is interested in the theory and methods of evaluation, on which has published widely in Italian and international journals and edited books. 

María Bustelo is a professor of political science and public administration at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), where she has directed the Master on evaluation since 2002. She is an EES past president (2012-2013) and an Executive Board member of the Spanish Evaluation National Agency (AEVAL) (2007-2012). She specializes in evaluation, gender, and institutionalization.