A quasi-market for evaluation services: Government–business dynamics in Italy’s EU Cohesion Policy

Drawing on data from Cohesion Policy funding, evaluation tender notices, and contract expenditures, complemented with semi-structured interviews with commissioners and contractors, the analysis identifies the key factors shaping the demand and supply of market-based evaluation services. Key issues encompass the prevailing large-scale procurement model, which influences industry structure, market dynamics, and evaluation quality. The findings call for active market stewardship to safeguard methodological diversity and strengthen commissioning capacity, rather than a straightforward segmentation strategy. In particular, strengthening public managers’ capacity to formulate focused evaluation questions and prioritize causal analysis could enhance the quality and policy relevance of evaluations informing Cohesion Policy programming.