DEVELOPING A MONITORING AND EVALUATION (M&E) CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM TO IMPROVE DEMOCRATIC GOOD GOVERNANCE

Abstract

This article explains the relationship between democratic societies’ needs and evaluation approaches in terms of various paradigms, methods and values of evaluation and develops a classification in terms of the types of evaluation needed to meet the needs of a democratic society. The article also underscores the importance of M&E as a mechanism to measure the effectiveness of service delivery, so that the public sector can facilitate better democratic governance outcomes in terms of its programmes, policies, interventions, projects, democracy models and the type of evaluation required. The methodology entails a desktop analysis of literature and official documents to conceptualise and contextualise the area of investigation. The methodological approach focused on specific dimensions of unobtrusive research techniques, such as conceptual and document analysis. Generally, unobtrusive research techniques investigate social behaviour to remove bias and encourage conceptual analysis. To attribute meaning to the data, the information generated is examined through an in-depth process of intellectual analysis, integration, classification, reflection and synthesis. The article found that merely having a clear knowledge base of the history and ‘state of the art’ evaluation or programme evaluation theory is not a clear-cut way to ensure successful evaluation practice. Furthermore, every theory of practice is likely to be more effective in certain settings than in others. The ultimate goal is to introduce improvements to the services they provide, based on a classification of M&E findings.