The debate on appropriate methodologies for evaluating democracy support has gained momentum in the last two decades, in tandem with significant increases in democracy assistance. The debate has raised more questions than answers, including:
- whether evaluation of democracy support differs or should differ from evaluation of other areas of development assistance;
- whether the diverse conceptions and definitions of democracy and democratization are an impediment to the sound evaluation of democracy support;
- whether there are ways in which the challenges of attribution and causality can be overcome in the evaluation of democracy support; and
- whether recent initiatives in the evaluating democracy support offer genuine steps forward.
This book is based on the proceedings of a workshop on Methods and experiences of Evaluating Democracy Support, organized by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and held in April 2006.
The main aim of the workshop was to explore ways in which existing methods and techniques of evaluating democracy support deal with the most important problems, such as the challenges of causality and attribution. This book is nowhere near providing answers to all these questions, nor is it intended to. Rather, it aims to share the main deliberations of the workshop and stimulate further debate. Most importantly, the book shares new conceptualizations of methods and techniques for evaluating democracy support and points the way forward to potentially promising new developments.
Chapter 1. Methods and experiences of evaluating democracy support: a moving frontier
Peter Burnell
Chapter 2. Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of USAID’s democracy and governance programme
Margaret J. Sarles
Chapter 3. Programme theory evaluation and democracy promotion: reviewing a sample of Sida-supported projects
Fredrik Uggla
Chapter 4. Progress and myths in the evaluation of the rule of law: a toolkit for strengthening democracy
Sandra Elena and Héctor Chayer
Chapter 5. Exploring human rights-based approach to the evaluation of democracy support
Hanne Lund Madsen
Chapter 6. Evaluating a democracy support evaluation: the Rights & Democracy ten-year taking stock exercise
Michael Wodzicki
Chapter 7. Gauging civil society advocacy: charting pluralist pathways
Harry Blair
Chapter 8. Evaluation of the utility of community-level democracy support for conflict resolution: the Community Action Investment Programme in Tajikistan
Natalia Mirimanova
Chapter 9. The evaluation of democracy support programmes: an agenda for further debate
Patrick D. Molutsi
Reference and further reading
About the authors
About International IDEA
About Sida
Index
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