ABSTRACT
Collaborative government entails changes in management and accountability relationships affect the nature of ties among citizens, politicians, government officials, service providers and consumers. This chapter explores the effects of government-third sector collaboration on the politics of evaluation. It begins with general issues of evaluation in the third sector, continues with issues in evaluating general collaborative efforts and looks at what happens to evaluation when government collaborates with third sector organizations. Several characteristics of third sector organizations suggest substantial obstacles to the conduct of evaluation. Evaluation of government-third sector collaborations faces the obstacles encountered by evaluation of third sector activity, evaluation of collaborative efforts in general and some "value-added" obstacles when these two are combined. The nature of government-third sector collaboration can be seen as running on a continuum ranging from that of principal-agent relationship to that of communion type partnership.
