The Growth of the Evaluation Tree in the Policy Analysis Forest: Recent Developments in Evaluation

The practice and profession of evaluation is continually evolving. From its early origin in the Great Society years of the 1960s, through its golden years of the 1970s, its transformation under the fiscal conservatism of the Reagan era in the 1980s, and in its maturation during the performance and results era of the 1990s, the field of evaluation continues to evolve in response to broader trends in society. This article examines recent developments and trends in the practice and profession of evaluation. Structured around the evaluation theory tree, the presentation of these developments elaborates on the three main branches of evaluation: methods, use, and valuing. The concluding discussion briefly addresses the central role of evaluation—and other types of knowledge production—in providing actionable evidence for use in public policy and program decision making.     

MISREPRESENTING MARX: A LESSON IN HISTORICAL METHOD

In this book Jonathan Sperber deploys his extensive knowledge of nineteenth‐century European social and political history, and his diligent research into sources that have become readily available only recently, to produce a substantial biography of Karl Marx. We find, however, that Sperber is mistaken in his treatment of Marx's ideas and of the intellectual contexts within which Marx worked. In fact, we suggest that he is systematically mistaken in this regard. We locate a root source of the error in his reductive approach to theoretical ideas. In section I we focus on the claim, taken for granted in the book, that Marx's ideas are instantiations of “materialism.” By detailed reference to the record of Marx's writings, we show that there is no justification for describing Marx as a “materialist” in the usually accepted senses of that term. In section II we review how Soviet and other interpreters of Marx, taking their lead from the later Engels, insisted that “materialism” was fundamental to Marxism. We suggest that Sperber's presentation of Marx's thinking as “materialist and atheist” aligns far better with such interpretations than it does with what Marx actually wrote. In sections III and IV we criticize Sperber's “contextualist” approach to dealing with ideas in history. His approach may seem reminiscent of Quentin Skinner’ s, but where Skinner deploys the discursive conventions prevailing in a past time to illuminate theoretical ideas, Sperber reduces theoretical ideas to context. We name Sperber's approach “theoretical nominalism,” a term that we use to denote the view that theoretical ideas are nothing but interventions into particular situations. We end by suggesting that greater attentiveness to philosophy and theory would have enriched Sperber's efforts in this book.     

Somebody Else, Somewhere Else: Racisms, Racialized Spaces and the Popular Geographical Imagination in Sweden

In conjunction with recurrent economic dislocations and the restructuring and melting of national capitalisms into one another, there has been a resurgence of racisms in Europe; even in Sweden, a country long stereotyped as an international champion of equality and economic and political justice. An array of concrete and racialized spaces has emerged and contributed to the further spread of racism. Deeply enmeshed in this process is a disjuncture between racist attitudes and behaviors, and a widely held image of the self and the nation as altruistic and just. Confronted by such internal dissonance, many, if not most, Swedes resolve matters through denial and projection: believing or asserting that the country's only racists are either skinhead youths or right-wing extremists, "somebody else." The contradiction between the racisms and national identity is also commonly culturally reworked through projecting upon other locations as well as other groups. To demonstrate the complexities and internal contradictions of this popular geographical imagination, this paper provides a detailed depiction and critique of one of its elements—the municipality of Sjöbo.