ABSTRACT
Since the rise of New Public Management in the 1980s, regular evaluations have been used as guiding instruments in cultural policy. However, the implicit promise of objective and evidence-based decision-making processes looks less credible once we understand how evalution studies are formulated and manipulatively applied. How, then, should we view the claim to epistemological validity of evaluation results? And how do we ensure evaluation studies are high-quality? It is not enough to fulfill formal criteria such as validity, clarity, reliability, and transparency. Evaluation is not a technique of logical deduction but an artful practice of interpretation to make a case intelligible in the light of selected premises, projects, and policies. This article addresses fundamental problems, ambivalences, and imponderables that arise in the course of any evaluation study. The aim is to achieve greater reflexivity in the inherent ambiguity and fragility of evaluation processes.
