ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a survey of the main actors involved in and institutional arrangements created for the evaluation of (central-) government policy/programs in the Netherlands. It provides a survey of the actors involved in policy evaluation in its more modern sense as well as qualifying remarks regarding initiation, methods, and criteria of policy evaluation. Evaluation implies judgement in the light of certain criteria. The establishment of a unit, with the Ministry of Finance, formally commissioned to promote policy analysis and evaluation, was to take place in the early 1970s. By the end of the 1970s, the use of policy evaluation ex post with central government was limited. If applied, it would be the more traditional evaluation of administrative practice, the dominant evaluation criterion being lawfulness. Politicians and top officials were backing the idea that policy evaluation should be put to use more often.
