ABSTRACT
The evaluation has been generally perceived as an output of a value-free technocratic process and has been used for years in decision-making both at domestic and international level. Both evaluation practitioners and policy-makers have usually conceived of evaluation as a functional tool that provides quasi-scientific information about what went wrong with regard to the evaluand. However, research on the politics of evaluation is growing. In general, this strand of literature has argued that despite rigorous methods applied in evaluation reports, evaluation does not exist in a vacuum, but is subject to political stakeholder interests and influence. Future research should further scrutinize the introduced mechanisms, especially whether revealed politics translate into evaluation reports themselves. Nevertheless, this study proves to be the first systematic comparative analysis of evaluation politics at the international level, and we hope that further research can benefit from our findings.
