It Does Matter. A New Framework on the Influence of Policy Evaluation

ABSTRACT

Governments worldwide have invested heavily in policy evaluation, providing many policymakers with a steady stream of evidence into the effectiveness, efficiency, or relevance of policies. Yet, despite these investments, systematic knowledge about the actual influence of policy evaluations remains surprisingly limited. This is partly due to the insufficient conceptual differentiation of policy evaluation as a distinct type of policy advice. Building on interdisciplinary evaluation literature and public policy scholarship, the article introduces a new framework designed to enhance our understanding and categorization of the changes policy evaluations bring about in terms of policy, polity, and politics, and how these dimensions interrelate. As a parsimonious heuristic tool, the framework enables a dynamic and comprehensive assessment of the influence of policy evaluations. It contributes to the theorization of policy evaluation influence and offers insights that may inform related research on the influence of expert knowledge, policy advice, and evidence‐informed policymaking more broadly.