The European Project, Federalism and Evaluation

Abstract

The US federalist system has been at the origin of evaluation in many ways: providing a laboratory for experimentation of innovative policies, and requiring evaluation of the growing federal intervention from the War on Poverty onwards. Evaluation approaches have been developed that took into consideration the multiple forms of collaboration activated by the federalist system. This experience offers a benchmark for considering evaluation of EU policies and programmes, as it has been elicited by the complex system of EU governance, encompassing both federalist trends -towards concentration of powers at the centre and towards autonomy at the lower levels. First, the article analyses the effects of the centralistic administrative culture of the EU on the way evaluations are conducted at the different levels. Second, it focuses on how the European value added is assessed in the evaluation of two main mechanisms of EU governance that imply a partnership between different jurisdictions: the Structural Funds programmes and the Open Method of Coordination. To do this, it discusses a growing literature of evaluations that utilize theories of power relations, from multilevel governance and network to principal-agent. K E Y W O R D S : additionality; contribution; federalism; subsidiarityAlthough the European project has unfolded as an emergent process in which states once warring among themselves have drawn closer together, its direction is still unclear. It has moved from loose cooperation to stronger integration, from being a small group of six countries to twenty-fi ve partners, along a path toward unity out of diversity. Nevertheless, regardless of how the European political system is defi ned, and of the complexity of its system of governance, it is undeniable, as we shall see, that at the heart of the crisis opened by the 'no' votes of France and the Netherlands to the Constitution, there is a debate about what Van Kersbergen and Veerbeck (2004: 151) call the 'highly controversial f-word of European federalism'.It has now become fashionable to describe the EU political system from the standpoint of its uniqueness, and to avoid any comparison 1 with a federal system, especially the US. Scholars have put forward models of state-centredness Evaluation

Governing policy evaluation? Towards a new typology

“…The article thus makes a key theoretical contribution towards engaging with governance theory in order to comprehend and perhaps ultimately govern patterns of evaluation conducted by many different kinds of actors-an approach which leading evaluation scholars have long called for (e.g. Stame, 2006Stame, , 2008 and which goes well beyond existing efforts to establish common 'evaluation policies' within single organizations (see Trochim, 2009). …”

“…Stern (2009) too wrote that at EU level 'there is a widespread perception in the evaluation community that independence is not always highly valued' (p. 72). Hierarchical forms of evaluation can also trigger considerable resistance from lower levels (Stame, 2008), a tendency which can certainly be observed in EU climate policy. As signatories of the UNFCCC, from 1993 the EU member states implemented greenhouse gas emission and eventually policy reporting requirements through a bottom-up 'Monitoring Mechanism' (Haigh, 1996;Hyvarinen, 1999).…”

Standing back and looking forward: Editors’ reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Evaluation

“…At a macro level we have also published a great deal about policy, policy making and governance. Articles about evaluating 'nudge theory' (Kosters and Heijden, 2015), legislation (Fitzpatrick, 2012), diplomacy (Kleistra and Willigen, 2010), network governance (Hertting and Vedung, 2012), federalism (Stame, 2008), accountability (Zapico-Goñi, 2007), would all fall into those categories. Often these articles highlight contentions and innovation pressures in policy thinking.…”

Climate policy innovation: developing an evaluation perspective

“…Some actors may fear that their favoured policy instruments could be undermined by rigorous assessments of effectiveness, and attempt to have available evidence framed in as politically convenient a manner as possible. Full disclosure may not be in the perceived interests of an individual state or sectors within it, and given the high degree of subsidiarity in decision making, states have been able to resist pressure for more systematic monitoring and evaluation (Stame 2008). Political tensions have even emerged in the past over the precise function of the EEA, whose potential role of collecting relevant data on institutional arrangements within member states and how they make EU legislation work remains undeveloped (Haigh 2001).…”