LIST OF PANELS

The evaluation was positioned in the last century as an ascending practice in the management of public policies in Western Democracies. In this context, the evaluation was characterized by a strong positivist and elitist epistemological seal, which aimed to prioritize the production of methodologically valid and useful information for the public decision-makers, such as suggested by the Scientificist (Suchman, 1968) and Decisionist (Nioche, 1982; Nioche y Poinsard, 1985; Nioche, 2016) evaluative currents.

The Politicizing approach to evaluation (Weiss, 1972) and its two main strands emerged as the antithesis of those trends and it was aligned with the broader debate on the democratic deficit and asymmetry between State and society (Pitkin, 1967; Dahl, 1971; Purcell, 1973). The first one uses political pluralism and epistemological interpretivism bases to argue that the low participation of social actors is due to the scarce contribution of evaluation to democracy, a premise that has led to various methods of participatory evaluation as the democratic one (MacDonald, 1974), centered on use (Patton, 1978), empowering (Fetterman, 1994), collaborative (Cousins ​​and Whitmore, 1998), or deliberative (House and Howet, 2001).  The second strand questions the previous focus on the internal sphere of evaluative methods. Thus, it suggests that the weak political contribution of evaluation is the result of its disconnection from the political-institutional environment, which makes it difficult to recognize the plurality of actors, even when applying participatory tools (Greene, 2006; Plottu and Plottu, 2009). Moreover,  this second strand highlights the role of evaluation in accountability by validating the coexistence of methods, as well as by indicating that they must include and cover a wide plurality of actors, starting from the actions evaluated, and safeguarding the relationships in its internal orbit as well as in its environment (Stufflebeam and Shinkfield, 1987; Alkin and Christie, 2004; Hanberger, 2009; Chouinard, 2013). On the other hand, the evaluative debate itself proposes to expand its borders by integrating other disciplines, especially those from the Analysis of Public Policies field, due to its explanatory potential in the matter (Jacob and Rothmayr 2009; Højlund, 2014), as demonstrated by the pluralistic (Monnier, 1995; Subirats, 1995), multiple (Majone, 1997) or cognitive resource (Radaelli and Dente 1996) evaluative approaches. 

This panel aims to deepen the politicizing debate on the evaluation of public policies, from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective that addresses its successes, weaknesses, and challenges. The general premise assumed is that the reinforcement of this approach can favor the contribution given by evaluation to democracy, insofar as it facilitates the exercise of participation rights, incidence, and control of the public by various actors, especially the social ones, traditionally excluded.

The theoretical relevance of this debate resides in the need to contrast the premises of the politicizing approach and the evaluation, its refutation, and eventual consolidation as a robust theoretical alternative. Likewise, its methodological relevance lies in analyzing which approach, methods, and evaluative tools help this perspective along. Finally, since the evaluation work has a democratic strengthening potential, the empirical relevance of the panel relates to the contributions of its findings to the field.

The politicizing debate on the evaluation of public policies has revealed that this tool not only fulfills a function of technical, economic, or organizational improvement but also a political one since it always confronts actors that carry diverse resources and interests. Likewise, it has revealed the field’s tendency to reinforce the political asymmetries that exist between the State and society regarding the management of public policies and programs, as an element that weakens democracy (Weiss, 1972; MacDonald, 19774; Kushner, 1996). All those inputs came from two main strands, the focused on "participation" in evaluation method one (Patton, 1978; Fetterman, 1994; Cousins ​​and Whitmore, 1998; House and Howet, 2001) and the "control or accountability" of policies or programs evaluated one (Stufflebeam and Shinkfield, 1987; Alkin and Christie, 2004; Hanberger, 2009; Chouinard, 2013).

In this context, the objective of this panel is to deepen the politicizing debate on the evaluation of public policies, from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective that addresses its successes, weaknesses, and challenges. The general premise assumed is that the reinforcement of this approach can favor the contribution from evaluation to democracy, insofar as it facilitates the exercise of participation rights, incidence, and control of the public by various states and especially the traditionally excluded social actors. Some questions will guide the discussion in this direction: what has been the conceptual, methodological, and analytical evolution of the politicizing debate? What have been its paradoxes or contradictions and how have they been addressed by literature? How has this approach been deployed or not, at an empirical level, and what results, effects or political impacts has it generated? What factors must be considered from the point of view of evaluation methods, subjectivity, culture, and vital conditions of the actors for this approach to be operationalized in practice? What political-institutional factors favor or disfavor this scenario? Are there new ways to deploy it beyond those found in the literature? Are there spaces for the integration of the main politicizing strands, centered on participation and control of the evaluated policies?

Both works from theoretical and applied orientations that come from different disciplinary approaches are expected to take part in it. Likewise, the contributions from literature reviews, research findings, or empirical experiences of evaluations from various types of public policies (Social, Educational, Health, Economic, Productive, Cultural, Territorial, Institutional, or others), deployed at any territorial level (supranational, national, subnational or local community) and led by different types of actors from the public sector, academia, civil society or others, are expected too. Finally, due to the orientation of the politicizing approach, it is expected that the works emphasize the effective viability of enhancing the role and spaces for social actors and their interaction with state actors, assuming that this facilitates a better contribution of the evaluation to democratic strengthening.