LIST OF PANELS

Does evidence-based policy making lead to purely technocratic, undemocratic decision-making or do evaluation results enrich the discourse in democratic processes? The panel “How do democracy and policy evaluation speak to each other?” aims at shedding light on the question of the interrelation between democracy and policy evaluation by discussing research on the use of evaluations in democratic processes as well as on the democratisation of the evaluation processes. Papers should address one of the following topics: (1) transfer of evaluation results into democratic decision making processes, (2) the use of evaluation results in argumentation and deliberative processes, (3) theory and practice of deliberative, democratic or participative evaluation, (4) expertise and opinion formation, (5) concepts and practice of evaluation culture in democracies. Both theoretical and empirical papers are welcome to the workshop. The workshop is open to all researchers from all over the world, irrespective of whether they are formally affiliated with the study of political science, public administration or with other adjacent fields (such as history, political philosophy, political theory, law, and others). Academic quality and a substantive interest in the research theme are the prime requirements for participation.

The notion of evidence-based policy making has become increasingly popular in recent years. At the same time, critics have argued that the evidence movement could lead to purely technocratic, undemocratic decision-making. Others retort to this criticism that evaluation results can enrich the political debate and challenge ideological and interest-based views and thus improve the quality of the discourse in political processes (e.g. Frey 2012; Howlett 2009). Yet another set of scholars argue that evaluations (and policy analysis more generally) need not only to provide knowledge and information to decision makers, but more importantly offer a basis for their arguments (Fischer & Forester 1993; Fischer 2007; Fischer & Gottweis 2012; Majone 1989). Associated with this literature is the tradition of evaluation research that deals with questions of valuing and the treatment of values in the evaluation process (Christie and Alkin 2013, 31; House & Howe 2003), as well as the literature on participative and democratic evaluation (e.g. Patton 2002). Accordingly, two points of discussion have evolved: first, how scientific evidence is best integrated in democratic processes and second, how evaluations are ideally carried out to provide a basis for their use in democratic processes. The present panel aims at shedding light on these two issues by presenting and discussing research on the use of evaluations in democratic processes as well as on the democratisation of the evaluation processes itself. The debate on the relationship between democracy and evaluation links to mainly four traditions in research in political science: The rich research tradition on the relationship between science and politics and the tension between democracy and technocracy dating back to the classical studies of Lindblom (1959), Wildavsky (1979) or Habermas (1968). Research on different, mostly post-positivist approaches of policy analysis including scholars such as Majone (1989), Fischer (1990, 2007, 2012) or Saretzki (2012b) arguing that policy analysis needs to provide arguments for democratic decision making processes. Research on democracy, in particular by scholars focusing on deliberative processes and the use of evidence in arguments such as Dryzek (1990), Habermas (1996), Chambers (2003), as well as Bohman & Rehg (1997). Literature on evaluation theory and practice focusing on participative and deliberative evaluation including Patton (1997, 2002), Valovirta (2002) or House and Howe (1999, 2003). Despite the growing interest in evidence-based policy making there is still little research on the democratic use of evaluation results in political processes. There is great need for findings on this neglected strand of research because it creates a different logic for drawing on knowledge than the instrumental logic used in the research on improvement of policy measures. In addition to this, the topic brings together two fields of political science, namely research on democracy and research on evaluation in taking the perspective of one field in order to look at the other field. This offers a broad platform to discuss various contexts and links and will thus enrich the research in both fields.