Chapter 7: Living Life at the Edge: Democracy, Equity, and Pragmatics in Evaluation¹

This chapter draws from and extends an analysis of difference I recently offered (Kushner, 2014) between Democratic Evaluation (DE), Deliberative Democratic Evaluation (DDE), and Equity-focused Evaluation (EQ). These three methodological approaches position evaluation in considerations about democracy and social justice. They are not alone—we enjoy the work of Fetterman (“Empowerment”); Cousins (“Participatory”); Mertens (“Inclusive/Transformative”); Greene (“Dialogic”); Mark, Henry, & Julnes (“Common Sense”); and others in similar vein. What this family of approaches share is a view of evaluation as a form of political action to redress power distortions in society. DE and DDE have transactional dimensions as an important part of their mission—they are both for democracy and democratic in their conduct. They conform to the typically radical observation of Donald Campbell (1998, p. 37): “We evaluation methodologists are in fact designing alternative political systems.” EQ is distinct, as we shall see, in working within existing power structures and relationships to support programs to realize transformational ends.