Assessing and Appraising the Effects of Policy for Wicked Issues: Including Unforeseen Achievements in the Evaluation of the District Policy for Deprived Areas in The Netherlands

Abstract

Urban regeneration is often acknowledged as a wicked policy issue that produces unanticipated outcomes. Most methods for policy evaluation treat those effects as flaws of planning or neglect them. We argue that wickedness is an inherent aspect of many policy issues and that it should be integrated in efforts to assess and appraise the effects of policy. We use a case of urban regeneration projects in The Netherlands to study how the unanticipated and unforeseen consequences of policy were accounted—or neglected—in the evaluation methods. Also, we present an alternative approach that takes into account the “by-effects” of policy.

Keywords:

• complexity
• performance evaluation
• unforeseen achievements
• wicked problems