Recent developments in policy evaluation have focused on new notions of process and use or, notably, "influence." But this debate among evaluators on how evaluations are used has been essentially a closed one-evaluators talking only among themselves. The debate has gone on seemingly oblivious to fundamental changes in the intellectual landscape of public management, organizational theory, information technology, and knowledge management. New realities demand a different approach toward evaluation.

The current era is characterized by the emergence of an increasingly global set of...

The literature on policy strategies, instruments, and styles is impressive. Still, a complex variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical tools hamper a good overview. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons proposes such a framework for the field and clearly shows how public policy instruments are classified, packaged, and chosen, while highlighting the role evaluation plays in the instruments-choice process.

Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons offers a comprehensive analysis of categories and typologies of policy instruments. It classifies sticks, carrots, and...

There is continual concern about the ability of governments to perform the duties and responsibilities that their citizens have come to expect from them. Many citizens view government as inept, arthritic, and dedicated to the preservation of the bureaucratic status quo. As we close the twentieth century, the challenge for democratic governments is to become adaptive, flexible, innovative, and creative. In short, they need to become learning organizations. This book explores what it will take for governments to break out of their traditional ways of approaching problems and leam new...

Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the "failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United States was...

On the occasion of the sixty-fifth birthday of I. L. Horowitz, a group of his mentors, colleagues, and students have come together to examine his work, and also engage in his writings. The work is divided into the major areas of Horowitz's efforts: Theory of Social Practice, The Sociology of Politics, Social Research and Professional Ethics, Nation-Building and Development, Cuba, the Caribbean and Communism; Religion, Culture and the Jewish Enigma, and a final segment on Publishing and the Craft of Writing. For more information, click here to go to the International Evaluation Research...

Structured schools, free schools, graded schools, ungraded schools, no schools at all--the conflicts over public education in America rage on, for contemporary schools have not lived up to our expectations. The essence of the criticism reflected in the essays in this volume is that America's dual educational goals--free inquiry and social mobility-are not being met. Instead of producing enlightened citizens capable of high social and economic mobility, our schools have become warehouses of children stored as commodities, docile and immobile.