Paper short abstract:

Impact evaluation has become increasingly important in international development practice, promoted as a means of supplying both accountability and learning. But are its own impacts so benign? This paper examines the dark side of impact evaluation. Who is excluded and how? What are the alternatives?

Paper long abstract:

Impact evaluation has become increasingly important in international development practice. The proponents of ever more 'rigorous' modes of evaluation vigorously promote it as a means of supplying both accountability and programme learning, and as an essential component of evidence-informed development policy-making. While the methodologies of impact evaluation have been and are the subject of considerable debate, this paper examines impact evaluation as a 'technology of power' with an undeclared capacity to disempower. Focusing on the evolving practices of Oxfam and other international NGOs, it asks a series of critical questions: Who is excluded and how? In what ways are different categories of supposed beneficiaries (e.g. programme participants, CSOs and NGOs, other stakeholders in the outcomes of international development) excluded by contemporary processes of impact evaluation? How and why does this happen? What part is played by methodological hubris and epistemological misconceptions? Are these intentional exclusionary manoeuvres or accidents of arrogance? And what are the alternatives? Can we identify ways in which those excluded from current styles of impact evaluation can be empowered and their voices heard? A better kind of impact evaluation? Or is inclusive impact evaluation an oxymoron? Where do we go from here?

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