Micro methods in evaluating governance interventions
18 June 2011
Although billions of dollars have been invested on improving governance in developing countries in the past decade, few of the programmes that have received funding have been subjected to strong and rigorous impact evaluation. The aim of this discussion paper from the German Development Institute (DIE) is to answer three key questions: what are the features of governance interventions that make rigorous impact evaluation difficult and challenging? Second, what aspects of governance have been evaluated by rigorous quantitative methods? And third, what evaluation lessons can we learn from previous experience and what practical implications does it have?
The paper is part of a broader research project to evaluate the effectiveness of new aid modalities entitled: “Evaluation of Budget Support as an Aid Instrument: Development and Applications of Evaluation Methods and Approaches.” It was financed by the Evaluation and Audit Division of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The paper suggests some next steps in the research agenda, including; firstly, a comprehensive scoping study of governance interventions that have been evaluated rigorously to identify evidence gaps which an evaluation might seek to close and, secondly, a systematic evaluation of a specific governance intervention to build on existing knowledge of ‘what works’,‘what doesn’t’ and ‘why’.
