Reflection on: “Evaluating the Democratic Quality of Local Democratic Practices – Sampling Seven Frameworks”

I have been an evaluator for a decade and have been involved in evaluation of programmes and projects with both formative and summative designs. The majority (but far from all) of the evaluations have been funded by the European Union and the stakeholders include municipal, regional and state organisations. My reflections on this article revolve around the usefulness and accessibility of the models discussed. This is because, in my experience, evaluations tend to lose their purpose if they do not meet the needs of practitioners (for example, officials or representatives for NGOs) and policymakers, but also because evaluators often find themselves struggling to put academic evaluation models into practice.