Chapter 15: Democracy, theory, and logic in evaluative research: Beware of Rationalism

Program Theory and Program Logic: these are powerful and persuasive approaches to evaluation that have caught the imagination of both evaluators and their sponsors alike. They seem to promise orderliness, predictability, ready mechanisms for fixing on what a program’s quality is. Very simply put, the two approaches share a value: to uncover the mechanisms through which a program functions as a process for bringing about change.

If you follow the approach I outline in this book, you will know that the ‘may’ in relation to context is far too cautious. There will always be a fourth component, and this will be the dominant one.