Empowerment and poverty-focused evaluation

Abstract

There is an intimate relationship between development and evaluation, to the extent that the very definition of development entails a value judgment about things that are worth promoting. Thus, the goal of development defines the metric for assessing its effectiveness. In the face of the challenge presented by the limited success of past development efforts, the development community has been searching for a new paradigm. Empowerment is emerging not only as an ultimate goal of development, but also as a fundamental determinant of its effectiveness. Furthermore, this perspective of development has prompted the international community to declare poverty eradication a fundamental objective of development and, therefore, a benchmark measure of the performance of socio-economic systems. This article examines some implications of this view of development for both the focus and the method of evaluation. The institutional dimension in assessing effectiveness is emphasised.