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The main objective of the paper is to address and explore a much-debated issue within the evaluation community: the idea of "democratic evaluation". What exactly is meant by this term? When can an evaluation be said to be democratic? Through the adoption of what behaviours should this ideal translate into concrete working practice? The essay aims to contribute to broadening the community's debate on these questions, which are central at a historical-political moment such as the post-emergence from Covid-19 and in the midst of an international crisis, that between Russia and Ukraine, which calls democratic evaluation into question in our country. On a general level, in fact, the situation of uncertainty due to the unpredictable effects of the pandemic, the social and economic crisis in the country and the consequent growing distrust of the citizens towards the administration seem to have increased the demand for accountability, leading to talk, as in the rest of Europe as well, of a "democratic deficit". On the other hand, recent administrative re-centralization, even assisted by current evaluative practices, only aggravates the inefficiency of public administration. Accountability, freedom and democracy are never given, they need to be defended, always regained: evaluation assumes a strategic role to this end; it can help bring citizens closer to public administration. The crisis between Russia and Ukraine is changing geopolitical balances; the effects of the war economy, inflation, the energy crisis, and the possible escalation of the conflict add to the uncertain situation due to the pandemic. New inequalities and an increase in poverty threaten to generate deep rifts in the country's socioeconomic fabric. Systemic shocks add to chronic problems: a demographic collapse, stagnation, job insecurity, and a lag in digitization. At the same time, the political system fails to represent and stabilize consensus over time. Governments also suffer from this instability, with the inability to design and implement structural reforms for the country, including that of the bureaucracy. Social complexity, chronic problems and systemic shocks, require the ability to apply effective public policies. State intervention and the ability of the bureaucracy to be efficient and responsive to social change are central issues for the health of democracy. Public policies move within a framework of very high complexity, in which the role of evaluation emerges, which should tend to the development of democratic accountability, illuminating decision-making choices through its methodological rigor, analytical capacity and scientific knowledge. The essay thus aims to address the potential of a democratic evaluation that can broaden the number of stakeholders, the field of values that are taken into account, the repertoire of research methods, the field of interest of policies, and the very definition of the objects of evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Italy, the recently launched spending review process seems the only alternative to budgetary cutbacks centrally applied across the board. Fighting waste and corruption while making administrative agencies more effcient and accountable to citizens is a key priority for local and regional governments as well. Yet, current spending reviews are conducted on aggregated broad-based appropriations of public spending and are, then, unable to generate that "usable" knowledge, which regional and local policy makers and managers can rely on for policy design and implementation. Indeed, a centralistic and technocratic modus operandi, heavily relying on civil service downsizing, risks undermining spending review effectiveness as public oversight tool, and reinforcing coercive isomorphism at the expense of political legitimacy and cultural acceptance of administrative performance assessments. This paper addresses such questions as on how a democratic "would-be federal" state operates and to what extent consolidation of public finances can be reckoned as an overriding goal against efficiency and accountability considerations at the local level Three issues emerge are key to reform: (i) what human resources public administration should invest on to adequately govern localities as well as regions; (ii) what measures are effective to fight waste and corruption; and (iii) what reliability and plausibility current performance measurement have with respect to actual public services offered to citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a view of research evaluation from the perspective of a large, multidisciplinary public university in the United States. Faced with increasing demands for accountability to the public, such universities currently lack adequate approaches to research evaluation. In fact, many of the approaches to research evaluation tend to rely on disciplinary standards for what counts as excellent research. Although these standards protect the autonomy of disciplines, departments, and faculty members, they do not speak to a notion of accountability that goes beyond accountability to academic peers. Public universities in the US should follow the example of the US National Science Foundation and find a way to incorporate concerns for broader societal impacts into their approaches to research evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]