Suchergebnisse

While the political nature of evaluation is widely recognized, few attempts exist to conceptualize and compare these politics. This article develops the concept of evaluation stakeholder influence potential, which builds on four political resources for influence (agenda-setting powers, staff and budgetary resources, access to evaluation results, and access to evaluators). These resources are measured for both member states and international public administrations in 24 United Nations organizations. We find that the administration—and not member states—have the largest influence potential in almost two-thirds of the international organizations. Our findings allow classifying them into three groups for which we expect differences in political contestation about evaluation use: two extreme-case groups (either member state or administrative dominance) and a group of contested middle cases. This finding of bureaucratic dominance reinforces literature on bureaucrats as powerful evaluation stakeholders in domestic settings and speaks to nascent research on bureaucratic influence in international organizations.

Intervenant à quelques années d'intervalle, les guerres civiles du Congo (1960-1965) et du Biafra (1967-1970) structurent durablement les rapports qu'entretiennent les sociétés et les États occidentaux avec l'Afrique subsaharienne indépendante. À partir d'une perspective comparatiste, cet article analyse la façon dont la communauté internationale, les acteurs non gouvernementaux et les opinions publiques occidentales réagissent à ces conflits et aux problèmes humanitaires qu'ils soulèvent. Il souligne ainsi les évolutions qui s'opèrent dans les réponses apportées à ces situations et dans la manière dont elles sont représentées. Ce faisant, l'article restitue la place occupée progressivement par l'humanitaire dans les relations internationales postcoloniales, tout particulièrement en ce qui concerne le continent africain.

This article focuses on the political dynamics shaping policy agendas and prescriptions in international organisations (IOs). It elucidates the interactions of Brazil's state and non-state actors with international bureaucrats, and their role in framing the strategy and recommendations promoted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Portuguese-speaking Community of Countries regarding the challenge of tackling food insecurity. The research builds on semi-structured interviews and a significant number of institutional documents, and combines constructivist international relations theory and sociological approaches to policy transfer/diffusion to explore the circulatory processes of policymaking. Aside from enhancing understanding of the micro-dynamics of framing and diffusion of policy ideas and prescriptions in IOs, the article provides information on the dissemination of policy solutions from the global south towards IOs and subsequently, to other developing countries.

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