Evaluation of and for Democracy

Abstract

There are many options for elaborating democratic evaluations. This article discusses evaluation of and for democracy, and in particular three broad democratic evaluation orientations: elitist democratic evaluation (EDE), participatory democratic evaluation (PDE) and discursive democratic evaluation (DDE). The archetypes differ regarding, for example, evaluation focus, inclusion of stakeholders, dialogue and the role of the evaluator. The three orientations promote certain democratic values and are linked to the elitist, participatory or discursive notions of democracy respectively. It is argued that there is a need to become more conscious of how evaluations not labelled democratic can influence democracy and what responsibility democratic evaluators have. If commissioners and evaluators become more aware of the different democratic orientations evaluations may have, they will be better able to decide which evaluation to commission and undertake.