Evaluation as Advocacy

The argument advanced in this article is that advocacy in evaluation is inevitable. This is so when advocacy is understood not as program partisanship or contaminating bias, but rather as a value commitment to a particular regulative ideal (of rational decision making, interpretive meaning, community activism). The regulative ideal for evaluation advanced in this discussion is a commitment to democratic pluralism. These ideas are illustrated and substantiated with three case examples. The question is not whether we should take sides, since we inevitably will, but rather whose side are we on? (Becker, 1967, p. 239).