Democratic evaluation brings a way of thinking about evaluation’s role in society and in particular, its role in strengthening social justice. Yet the reality of applying it, and what happens when it is applied particularly outside the West, is unclear. Set in South Africa, a newly formed democracy in Southern Africa, the book affords an in-depth journey that immerses a reader into the realities of evaluation and its relation to democracy. The book starts with the broader introductory chapters that set the scene for more detailed ones which bring thorough insights into national government, local government, and civil societies’ experience of evaluation, democratic evaluation and their understanding of how it contributes to strengthening democracy (or not). A teaching case, the book concludes by providing guiding questions that encourage reflection, discussion and learning that ultimately aims to inform practice and theory.

Democratic evaluation brings a way of thinking about evaluation's role in society and in particular, its role in strengthening social justice. Yet the reality of applying it, and what happens when it is applied particularly outside the West, is unclear. Set in South Africa, a newly formed democracy in Southern Africa, the book affords an in-depth journey that immerses a reader into the realities of evaluation and its relation to democracy. The book starts with the broader introductory chapters that set the scene for more detailed ones which bring thorough insights into national government, local government, and civil societies' experience of evaluation, democratic evaluation and their understanding of how it contributes to strengthening democracy (or not). A teaching case, the book concludes by providing guiding questions that encourage reflection, discussion and learning that ultimately aims to inform practice and theory.

First published in 1987. The central concept of the book is that of 'democratic' evaluation, one of the most influential ideas in the development of education practice in this country since professional evaluation emerged in the 1960s. The question explored, through an examination of the theory and practice of democratic evaluation, is whether it is possible to both posit and practice an approach to evaluation that provides an effective curb on the derivatisation and centralisation of information for educational decision-making. The book documents the emergence of politically conscious evaluation in this country and through two detailed cases explores the strengths and weaknesses of democratic theory in practice. Issues concerning the rights, obligations and freedoms of evaluators in the conduct and dissemination of evaluations are discussed.

Over the past 25 years, the United States has made support for the spread of democracy to other nations an increasingly important element of its national security policy. These efforts have created a growing demand to find the most effective means to assist in building and strengthening democratic governance under varied conditions. Since 1990, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported democracy and governance (DG) programs in approximately 120 countries and territories, spending an estimated total of $8.47 billion (in constant 2000 U.S. dollars) between 1990 and 2005. Despite these substantial expenditures, our understanding of the actual impacts of USAID DG assistance on progress toward democracy remains limited-and is the subject of much current debate in the policy and scholarly communities. This book, by the National Research Council, provides a roadmap to enable USAID and its partners to assess what works and what does not, both retrospectively and in the future through improved monitoring and evaluation methods and rebuilding USAID's internal capacity to build, absorb, and act on improved knowledge.

Inclusive approaches to evaluation emphasizing participation andcollaboration can enhance the efficiency of data collection,improvelearning, and strengthen commitment to act on results andalso reflect the highest aspirations and ideals of a democraticsociety. The contributors to this volume use case studies todiscover the lessons learned so far from successful andunsuccessful attempts to democratize evaluation. They offer tenquestions to guide evaluation planning from a deliberative,democratic viewpoint, and look at a failed attempt at inclusiveevaluation to analyze how deliberative intentions can be distorted.Focusing on participation, they discuss how best to use differenttypes of dialogue to make evaluation more participatory, examine anevaluation program in a psychiatric institution to explore thechallenge of employing participatory, democratic approaches in ananti-democratic environment, and more. This is the 85th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions forEvaluation.

Democracy in Motion uses theory, research, and practice to comprehensively explore what we know, how we know it, and what remains to be understood about deliberative civic engagement. The book is useful to scholars, practitioners, public officials, activists, and citizens who seek to utilize deliberative civic engagement in their communities.

Although democracy is a widely held value, concrete measurement of it is elusive. Gerardo L. Munck’s constructive assessment of the methods used to measure democracies promises to bring order to the debate in academia and in practice. Drawing on his years of academic research on democracy and measurement and his practical experience evaluating democratic practices for the United Nations and the Organization of American States, Munck's discussion bridges the theories of academia with practical applications. In proposing a more open and collaborative relationship between theory and action, he makes the case for reassessing how democracy is measured and encourages fundamental changes in methodology. Munck’s field-tested framework for quantifying and qualifying democracy is built around two instruments he developed: the UN Development Programme’s Electoral Democracy Index and a case-by-case election monitoring tool used by the OAS. Measuring Democracy offers specific, real-world lessons that scholars and practitioners can use to improve the quality and utility of data about democracy.

The Human Right to Democracy is the first major study to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the debate. It reconstructs the relevant positions in that debate, identifies the key points of disagreement, and proposes an understanding of the human right to democracy that might form the basis of a wide consensus. The book rejects the idea of a comprehensive right to democratic institutions, and instead argues for a minimal “human right to democracy” which is best understood as an individual’s right to voice. The human right to voice is a right, enjoyed by any individual independently of his or her place of residence or nationality, to be heard and supported in cases of severe injustice that is tolerated or condoned by the political community or polity of which the individual is a member. By bringing together human rights discourse and democratic theory, as well as taking into account practical politics, this study broadens the scope of the debatefrom a sometimes overly-narrow focus. The book is of interest not only to political philosophers, but also to international lawyers, diplomats, representatives of civil society, human rights activists, and specialists in development economics.

In Democracy and International Conflict, James Lee Ray defends the idea, so optimistically advanced by diplomats in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise and so hotly debated by international relations scholars, that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and therefore offer an avenue to universal peace. Ray acknowledges that despite persuasive theoretical arguments and empirical evidence in favor of this idea, the democratic peace proposition is susceptible to attack on three points: the statistical rarity of both international wars and democracies; the difficulty in defining democracy; and the vulnerability of democratic regimes. To confront these criticisms, Ray offers a systematic analysis of regime transitions and a workable definition of democracy as well as careful scrutiny of cases in which democracies averted international conflict.

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