Chapter 7: The Third Perspective: Uniting Accountability and Learning Within an Evaluation Framework that Takes a Moral-Political Stance

Two fundamental functions of evaluation—accountability and learning— are in constant tension and often, perhaps inappropriately, seen as mutually exclusive. The use of evaluation is inherently linked to meeting accountability and learning information needs. We argue in this chapter that both functions are essential to the sustainability of evaluation system development and field building, but that there exists globally a marked imbalance favoring accountability interests. Much of what we know about enhancing the usefulness of evaluation has to do with relationship building between evaluator and user communities and fostering learning from evaluation. Evidence has shown that decision- and policymakers and others within the program community are more likely to embrace evaluation and to integrate it into their thinking and decision making if they experience successful use of evaluation (e.g., Cousins & Bourgeois, 2014). Successful use, we would argue, will often take the form of learning from evaluation. Our challenge, then, becomes one of developing strategies that will bring the learning function of evaluation into greater balance with the accountability function, thereby enhancing the prospects of evaluation field building. However, rather than creating a limiting and false dichotomy between accountability and learning, we frame a new way of thinking about the problem, arguing it is ultimately a tension between a political or transformative approaches to evaluation and bureaucratic or technocratic ones. We posit that in taking a transformative stance, the dichotomy between learning and accountability fades away. Both become routes for evaluation to “speak truth to power.”