Evaluation as a political arena : an inquiry into the use of rational methods within an imperfect rational legal state

Abstract

Apparently, no one would deny the importance of evaluation as a tool to improve efficiency and efficacy of public policies. Indeed, the growing complexity of government in industrialized societies claims for the intensive use of rational methods of monitoring and evaluation of the results of policies involving much of state's resources. Yet, that idea is valid only in the case of the most developed countries in which evaluation has come to be part of the administrative culture. Stemming from a long standing tradition in those countries, evaluation turned out to be na uncontroversial matter in itself. In Latin American countries, however, there is an almost complete absence of evaluation. This paper aims at addressing the factors that explain this lack of any idea of evaluation among public officials in those countries.

The basic hypothesis underlying our research is that within the social and political structures of Latin America the implementation of evaluation processes is consciously hindered as far as it represents a threat to many political groups that control state apparatuses and make personalistic, clientelistic or even a venal use of it. In spite of efforts made by many organizations, institutions and personalities, powerful interest groups have been continuously able to secure for their members high positions in Public Administration.

The resource allocation is highly dependent upon direct political (even electoral) considerations, budget execution suffers from contingent constraints (what puts it under the arbitrary control of some high civil servants) and resource spending must be a trump of government to influence the political scene. Considering this context, evaluation appears as a dangerous threat to those interests in as much as it does not serve exclusively as a rational tool to improve government's performance, but as a potential denunciation of ana entire system that allow some groups a large amount of discretionary action.

On the other side, it has been noticeable from the 90's a trend of certain groups among high civil servants, intellectuals and some opposition parties that run against that tide. They propose a new approach to the role of the State in Latin America and other consequential changes in Public Administration processes. This group has made of technical requirements a weapon in the fight for the implementation of a new model of public management. The State apparatus has been the complex scenario in which this strive takes place.

The way the transition to democracy took in Latin-american countries have circumscribed changes to the constitutional domain, leaving other sensitive areas beyond reach. This is case for political system, income distribution, social policies as well as for the administrative apparatus. Under such conditions the Brazilian State turned out to be an imperfect rational legal State for it now disposes of a new institutional framework spousing rational-legal values and procedures while tolerating clientelistic, personalistic and even venal practices within the State machinery. This kind of contradiction is typical of Brazilian political process for it allows compromise between opposite elites, avoiding consequently any form of open dissensus.

In this context, evaluation looms large as a technicality that has acquired a citizenship's sense for not only it permits society to unveil the misdemeanours of the political system, but it points out to the advantages of a new way of seeing politics in Latin America.