The organisation of evaluations: the influence of the ministry of finance on evaluation systems.

Abstract

Background: Despite increasing scholarly interest in the organisation of evaluations within different countries' political-administrative landscapes, not much attention has hitherto been paid to the consequences of a specific institutional set-up for the function of evaluations within government.

Aims and objectives: This article investigates how the organisational anchorage of policy evaluations within central administration shapes the function those evaluations primarily serve.

Methods: We focus on the role of ministries of finance for coordinating countries' evaluation systems, and study its influence in Denmark and the Netherlands through a combination of document analysis and interviews with centrally placed civil servants.

Findings: Our analysis shows how the ministries of finance come to influence the evaluation activities of the whole central administration by constituting a specific economic outlook on evaluation, which (1) narrows down the applied evaluation methods and criteria; (2) inserts the ministry of finance as primary evaluation user; and hereby (3) furthers accountability rather than learning as the main function of evaluations within central administration. In both countries, the result is that the ministry of finance's main role in the evaluation systems favours somewhat defensive qualities, where evaluations are primarily used for control and piecemeal changes in policies, rather than fundamental revisions or reflections on the appropriateness of specific policies.

Discussion and conclusions: Our findings indicate that the influence of evaluation systems is not only dependent on the degree of institutional anchorage of evaluation activities, but also very much a matter of whom the evaluation systems is centred around.