"Are modernity's blueprints for evaluation theory and practice exhausted?" Only now and again one finds provocative questions and insights during an evaluation conference keynote. A keynote that is Innovative. Thought-provoking. Visionary. In 2018, renowned evaluation scholar Thomas Schwandt delivered one of these rare speeches at
Co-evolution – the mutual shaping of institutions, markets, society and governance over time – emerges as a first principle in understanding China’s transformation. This concluding post draws together the series’ lessons for evaluation and development practice
China’s development story is an extraordinary example of complex adaptive systems thinking applied to political-economic transformation. ‘Directed improvisation’ – combining top-down strategic vision with bottom-up experimentation – holds vital lessons for us.
Democracy, human rights, Africa engagement, the Belt and Road ‘debt trap’ – four dominant narratives about China examined alongside alternative perspectives. Why we must demonstrate nuance and pluralism.
Our assumptions about China are shaped by narratives we rarely question. This post challenges us to see through others’ eyes – understanding how worldviews, cultural patterning and historical memory shape radically different perspectives on the same reality.
China’s ambitious vision for an ‘ecological civilisation’ offers a striking counterpoint to Western development models. This post examines how Confucian philosophy, environmental policy and systems thinking converge in China’s approach to sustainable development.
We can learn from one of the greatest transformative development success stories of all time. For the first time in history a country has lifted 850 million people out of poverty at a pace never seen before. Why evaluators have an imperative to learn from this achievement.
If you read this year only one set of papers useful for SDG related evaluation, let it be this ISC/Nilsson et al. series on the interactions between the SDGs, developed between 2016 and 2018, as well as the subsequent paper on the interactions of SDG 14 by Gerald Singh
What dominates the world we live in today is the highly unsustainable fossil fuels addiction that is inducing upon us natural catastrophes that are abnormally speeding up migration crises, food and water shortages, wildfires, military conflicts and more. Indeed, infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. The natural and
Can evaluation help enable and support transformative development? We know we need the latter. Yet like sustainability, transformation (or transformative change) and transformative development are these days frequently dismissed as 'buzzwords' (or even worse, as 'fuzzwords'). This is a very big mistake. These are extremely important
