Getting to the Roots of Evaluation Capacity Building in the Global South

Multiple Streams Model to Frame the Agenda Status of Evaluation in Turkey

Abstract

A growing body of research is investigating the mechanisms to develop evaluation capacity in the Global South, but relatively little attention has been given to an equally important question: Under what conditions does the need to conduct and use evaluations for national decision making become a high priority on the governmental agenda? This article utilizes Kingdon's (2003) Multiple Streams Model to understand when and how evaluation is pushed higher on the public policy agenda in the Global South by using Turkey as a country case. This article argues that evaluation capacity building in the developing world may not be successful unless evaluation is indigenously elevated as a prominent item on the government's agenda. Turkey's case demonstrates evaluation's fleeting agenda status because evaluation as a policy solution has not yet become joined to a real problem despite the opening of a brief window of opportunity.