Responses to Decline

This chapter focuses on the challenge of minimally acceptable and low quality evaluations, which are commissioned by bureaucracies. The authors apply Hirschman’s theory of “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations and states” (1970) to analyze how bilateral and multilateral international development agencies operationalize these concepts to respond to this problem. They subsequently consider how the structure and dynamics of bureaucratic organizations influence how voice, exit, and loyalty are operationalized to improve the quality of evaluations and support evaluation to fulfil its mandate to speak truth to power. The chapter concludes by considering the effectiveness of bureaucratic responses to the quality problem and reflects on alternative responses that could be more effective.