ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the culture of evaluation in Italy, seen against the development of a universal evaluation culture. It focuses on the relationships between the politico-administrative and the evaluation cultures. The Italian politico-administrative system has been mainly shaped on the model of the French Napoleonic state, a model most admired but never fully attained. The chapter considers the main characteristics of the Italian Napoleonic-type politico-administrative tradition: its centralism and legalism. It analyzes the culture of evaluation through different cases of public policies that have promoted the development of evaluation practice. The chapter discusses the main issues in the Italian culture of evaluation that will have to be taken into account by whoever is interested in "spreading the culture of evaluation," a goal that is avowedly shared by policy reformers, professionals, and academics, not to mention the Italian Evaluation Association, that considers this as its mission.
