ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the power dimension in presenting the role and influence that the various players involved may have in the carrying out of a given evaluation, and allows us to understand evaluation as a power game from the standpoint of the stakeholder. It describes the different arguments used to justify the presence of stakeholders in the evaluation process. The chapter identifies the distribution of power in a given evaluation and the attitudes and "missions" or roles that each player has in the process. It focuses on participatory approaches to evaluation that are sometimes presented as alternatives that allow power to be balanced between various interlocutors. Evaluation occurs at a specific moment in the policy process and permits actors who do not necessarily know one another to collaborate in order to determine if a public policy or a program is meeting its intended objectives.
