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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]

The paper describes a research performed by the Department of Anthropological Sciences for the Regione Liguria, finalized to the definition of a set of indicators for the distribution of the Regional Social Fund, feeding a consistent part of Liguria's social policies, governed by the Regional Social Plan and by Local Plans. The research is inserted in a setting of quite rigid normative and programming indications, even if, as it will be described, have taken places interesting retroactions between scientific results and the re-thinking of adopted criteria (or of their practical translation) by the decision maker, considering the results obtained though the operationalization of pre-defined criteria. These aspects have been recently observed by the Italian theoretical framework (Parra Saiani, 2009; Bezzi, Cannavò e Palumbo, a cura di, 2010), being always characterized by a proficient mix between descriptive-interpretative use and practical function. In these cases it is mainly used the Lazarsfeld sociological approach (Lazarsfeld, 1965), such as the selection of principal dimensions of the concept and the successive realization of variable (indicators) permitting to observe such dimensions. The research has maintained a certain degree of continuity with the Lazarsfeld's paradigm, even if opening to some critical reflections about it. More specifically, it emerges a continuous retroaction between indicators, dimensions and indicated concepts, that in their evaluative use produces also a wider consciousness of practical implications of adopted choices, both on the methodological plan, both on the political one. In this way, it is obtained a result that produces innovations and empowerment both on classic working models in social research, both on interested decisional processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the evolution of public performance evaluation from the early nineties to the present, age of the so-called spending review. It is a re-reading of facts with an operational dimension, also to orient future choices and the growth of the country, promoting policies for the development of productive public spending and acknowledging merit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribute describes the evaluation of the project "Genitori Più -- Campagna di promozione della salute nei primi anni di vita" (Parents Plus -- a health promotion campaign), developed during 2008-2009 in several Italian Regions. Genitori Più main objectives were to increase the knowledge and to change some behaviors in the health professionals working on birth path and in the parents, focusing on 7 determinants that have been proved important for the health of the babies. The evaluation followed the whole project with the constant implication of the project team using structured questionnaires. The evaluation surveys involved 5.961 health professionals and 5.819 parents, in particular mothers. In this paper we show how evaluation in health promotion can give to decision-makers several elements for re-thinking and adjusting the programs, using different evaluation strategy like longitudinal match over time or across different territories or across different strata of population. The evaluation showed how knowledge and behaviors are different in each territories involved in the project and between social classes, and showed much higher levels in the areas where the preventive intervention were more rooted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correct assessment of critical variables influencing public investment final outcome is often a crucial procedure, especially in cases where the dynamics of such variables cannot be controlled by public agents, because they mainly depend on choices and behaviors of other operators. This is a typical situation occurring in development project assessment, characterized by a high uncertainty degree and by a scarce availability of information in relation to the behaviour of aleatory variables influencing investment final outcome. In such cases, risk analysis by directly using Montecarlo method could be misleading: on the contrary, we think that such an evaluation should be preceded by uncertainty analysis, allowing to generate new useful information for subsequent risk assessment. In this context, the paper presents one possible evaluative pattern, especially suited for development projects assessment, allowing first to understand the leeways of uncertainty between which investment decision must be taken and, then, to estimate investment risk and to generate useful information to help Decision Maker defining the most suitable economic tools to mitigate it. The proposed evaluative pattern is composed by four steps, based on different techniques and sequentially articulated, so that each step generates new useful information for developing the following one. Such a scheme allows both to deepen the information produced by the evaluative process, and to guarantee more decisional transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests some considerations regarding the relationship between evaluation and making decision processes, through the description of an evaluation experience of some formative projects orientated towards unemployed young people living in Apulia Region. After the definition of evaluation question, made together with Educational Local Authority, we have preferred a qualitative research approach. Sharing a participative approach, we have chosen a multistakeholder research design as instrument to catch the representations of actors involved regarding the evolution of projects, the weak and strong aspects, through to focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews respectively administered to actuators and beneficiaries of these projects. Interviews have been analyzed first trough content analysis of relevance and in a second moment trough associations analysis between words, by the use of T-Lab software. Highlighting stakeholders' suggestions and recommendations and giving back them to the decision maker confirms the utility of evaluation as instrument to supporting making decision processes, with the aim of improving policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]