I am re-posting here a blog post I wrote in 2017 (Part 5 in my DAC Evaluation Criteria series). I want to highlight aspects of what I had written at the time, not about the criteria as such, but to reinforce some of the arguments I made about the
Osvaldo is one of the most knowledgeable professionals I have ever met - a veritable walking encyclopaedia of all matters related to evaluation. Over the years it has been a feast for me to meet up and occasionally work with him, among others as members of the International Evaluation Advisory Committee
Co-evolution – the mutual shaping of institutions, markets, society and governance over time – emerges as a first principle in understanding China’s transformation. This concluding post draws together the series’ lessons for evaluation and development practice
China’s development story is an extraordinary example of complex adaptive systems thinking applied to political-economic transformation. ‘Directed improvisation’ – combining top-down strategic vision with bottom-up experimentation – holds vital lessons for us.
China’s ambitious vision for an ‘ecological civilisation’ offers a striking counterpoint to Western development models. This post examines how Confucian philosophy, environmental policy and systems thinking converge in China’s approach to sustainable development.
I have long thought that evaluators don't define 'success' in meaningful ways. Now highly respected economist Matt Andrews has just released a very useful working paper that confirms how much more carefully we need to think about this important concept. Most of our definitions and measurement
"Aid projects might yield satisfying micro-results, but they generally do little to change the systems that produce the problems in the first place." On 16 July 2018 fifteen prominent economists, including three Nobel winners, wrote in the Guardian that - my summary - the aid system is broken because
Can evaluation help enable and support transformative development? We know we need the latter. Yet like sustainability, transformation (or transformative change) and transformative development are these days frequently dismissed as 'buzzwords' (or even worse, as 'fuzzwords'). This is a very big mistake. These are extremely important
How good are we at defining and judging 'success' - the essence of what evaluators do? Let us consider a pertinent example: Every year the aid industry spends a quarter of its funding, around US$15 billion, on 'capacity development' (CD). So-called 'state-building'
I argued that the DAC criteria should get due credit. As noted in Part 1 of this series, they have been useful in many ways. Most importantly, they drew our attention to important aspects that we need to consider whenever we evaluate in the development space. The DAC criteria had
