Topic: Present Trends in the Evaluation of Development Aid Programs

Approach: I intend to study how recent movements, both in public administration and in development aid, have been shaping evaluation policies and methods of aid agencies and international organizations. With respect to public administration, I will be focusing on recent management theories such as: Result Based Management (RBM), New Public Management (NPM), Reinventing Government, and the Learning Organization framework. With respect to trends in development intervention, I will analyze how the growing emphasis on comprehensive development approaches and sector programs is affecting evaluation systems (purposes, scope, tools, participants…), leading to the emergence of new types of evaluation (cluster evaluations, country-level evaluations, outcomes evaluations, participatory evaluations, thematic evaluations…). Within the new aid intervention approaches and practices I will consider: the OECD/DAC New Development Strategy, the World Bank Comprehensive Development Frameworks (CDFs) and Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers (PRSPs), and the UN Millennium Development Goals.