A tool for many purposes: The design and policy-making impact of evaluation in international organizations

评估是官僚组织为了调整既定做法或获得新的想法而惯用的一种工具，用来评估项目的运作和效果。但评估也可以战略性地用于确认或传达预先存在的偏好。设计评价的人决定了提出的问题，反过来又决定了提供的答案。认识到一些国际组织（IOs）已成为自我评价机构，而另一些几乎没有评价，本项目调查的因素形成IOs的评价做法。拟议的项目假定，在不同的条件下，国际行政当局和国际组织的成员国有不同的评价相关利益，这既影响评价的设计，也影响其结果的决策影响。该项目然后问：是什么因素，解释在IO的评价设计的变化？评估结果对信息作战决策产生影响的因素是什么？解决这些问题需要新的实证研究。由于参与评价活动的人接触和调查评价活动可能既困难又微妙，拟议项目将以两种方式利用研究股的特权：首先，它将利用已建立的联系与评价专家进行定性访谈;第二，它将对在第一个研究阶段中已经被联合部队研究人员采访过的所有信息作战官员（目前有300多人）进行一次调查。通过这一创新办法，该项目将对国际公共行政研究股作出贡献，将评价作为一种重要的行政工具进行概念化和研究，同时在理论上承认行政部门和其他政治利益攸关方都可以从战略上利用行政工具。

Evaluation is a tool bureaucratic organizations conventionally use to assess the working and effectiveness of the programs in order to adjust established practice or gain new ideas. But evaluation can also be used strategically to confirm or communicate pre-existing preferences. Who designs evaluation determines the questions raised and shapes, in turn, the answers provided. Recognizing that some international organizations (IOs) have become self-evaluating institutions while others hardly evaluate at all, this project investigates the factors shaping IOs evaluative practices. The proposed project assumes that, under different conditions, international administrations and member states in IOs have different evaluation-related interests which affect both the design of evaluation and the policy-making impact of its results. The project then asks: What are the factors that explain variation in evaluation design in IOs? And what are the factors that explain the impact of evaluation results on IO policy-making? Answering these questions requires new empirical research. Because accessing and investigating evaluative activity can be both difficult and delicate for those involved, the proposed project will make use of the Research Units privileged access in two ways: first, it will use established contacts for qualitative interviews with evaluation experts; and second, it will conduct a survey of all IO bureaucrats already interviewed by the Units researchers during the first research phase (currently over three hundred). Through this innovative approach, the project will contribute to the Research Unit International Public Administration by conceptualizing and studying evaluation as a crucial administrative tool while making the theoretically important recognition that administrative tools can be exploited strategically both by the administration and by other political stakeholders.