Book Review: The Institutionalisation of Evaluation in Europe

The global development of evaluation has steadily increased over the past 50 years. Evaluation has progressively been acknowledged as an important aid for policy making and policy review in the public and private sectors as well as in humanitarian and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Evaluation has mainly been used to measure “success,” render policies accountable to the public, and draw out important lessons, although its scope of purpose and use has become increasingly diverse over the last few decades. But what, if any, are the rules, norms, and regulations in place to support the evaluation process? And how readily can these be adapted to meet new demands, incorporate innovations, and be employed in new activity domains? In short, how well is evaluation now institutionalized? Such are the questions the editors of The Institutionalisation of Evaluation in Europe set out to answer. This book is the first in a four-volume series aimed at analyzing how well evaluation has become established in different continents around the world. The other three volumes will cover America, Africa, and Asia. While there have been previous publications on the same theme (Furubo et al., 2002; Jacob et al., 2015), this series plans a more comprehensive coverage for each of the four continents and, ultimately, systematic comparisons across countries and continents. The editors developed an analytical framework to structure data collection by the country-specific authors of each chapter to enable both country-to-country comparisons and the synthesis of findings across the chapters. The framework defines “institutionalization” as being comprised of three subsystems: (a) the political system of “institutional structures and processes”; (b) the social system, summarized as “societal dissemination and acceptance of evaluation in civil society”; and (c) the system of professionalization, referring specifically to the professionalization of evaluations (p. 15). This volume analyzes the situation in 16 European countries and the European Union. Country profiles are presented according to the geographical region: Northern, Western, Southern, and Central Eastern Europe. Data collection and analysis principally relied on evaluation specialists from each of the selected countries. The editors recruited chapter authors based on their overall familiarity with the evaluation status quo in the selected countries. To respond to the questions identified in the editors’ framework, authors drew on their personal experience, professional networks, and extensive documentary review. Book Review