Caught between Winning “Rebiz” and Efficacious Learning: Reactivity to Performance Metrics in Development

• In Event: 1549 - The Rhetoric of Development

Abstract

In an era focused on “evidenced-based decision making” evaluation systems are understood to deliver both accountability and learning “what works.” Centering a single mandated evaluation system as the object of study, I demonstrate how and why international development evaluation so often fails to deliver on learning about development programming. I complicate understandings of the role of data and evaluative practices in development from the point of view of sixty development professionals in two East African countries and a donor country. I show how a discursive focus on learning ‘what works’ in an era interested in ‘evidence’ is paradoxically filtered out through organizational pressures. Using reactivity as a lens, I help forge the tight study of evaluation practices in the development field, showing the importance of quantification and commensuration to development studies. This research builds theory by nuancing the role of metrics in organizational survival, the mediating position of the professionals whose career aspirations alter the interpretation of project metrics, and, lastly, how comparative pressures at multiple levels undermine attempts to learn.

Authors

• Emily Springer, University of Minnesota

• Tayler Lynn Nelson, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities