Evaluation has become an important instrument for rational governance and is used in an increasing number of countries and policy fields. Recent developments at the global, national and local level are changing the conditions and functions of evaluation worldwide. This book examines current global development trends and changing demands for evaluation. It addresses issues surrounding professionalisation and globalisation, examining the need to strengthen accountability for social development in various different policy fields, regions and countries to improve governance and its impacts on social betterment. It also considers issues of quality, utility and further education and the upgrading of evaluation in a broad variety of different organisations, such as multilateral donor organisations, national public administrations, private consultancies, civil-society organisations, universities, and research institutes. With contributions from 30 different countries, this book combines a broad variety of viewpoints to examine the global future of evaluation.

Doha Abdelhamid, King Abdulazziz Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue Forum, Vienna, Austria. Maria Albrecht, Research Assistant, Free University Berlin, Germany. Brad Graeme Philip Astbury, Centre for Program Evaluation (CPE), University of Melbourne, Australia. Laila El Baradei, Professor of Public Administration; American University in Cairo, Egypt Hans-Martin Boehmer, Visiting Professor, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA. Peter Dahler-Larsen, Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Dieter Filsinger, Dean of the Faculty for Social Sciences, University of Applied Science, Saarbruecken, Germany Verena Friedrich, Director of Studies of the Evaluation Study Program, University of Bern, Switzerland.  Evelyn Funk, Research Assistant, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute of Political Science, Duisburg, Germany.  Jan-Eric Furubo, Audit Counselor, National Audit Office, Sweden. Silvia Hernández Sánchez, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. Asela Kalugampitiya, EvalPartners Executive Coordinator, Sri Lanka Nisar Ahmad Khan, Independent evaluator, Pakistan Frans L. Leeuw, Director of the Research, Statistics and Documentation Center (WODC), Ministry of Justice, Den Haag, The Netherlands.  Alejandra Lucero, Lecturer and Research fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Socioeconómicas, National University of San Juan (UNSJ), Argentina Laura Pan Luo, Professor of Evaluation and Research in the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agriculture University, Beijing, China. Sergio Martinic Valencia, Associate Professor, Catholic University of Chile André Martinuzzi, Associate Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. Donna Mertens, Retired Professor of Education, Gallaudet University, Washington D.C., USA. Wolfgang Meyer, Assistant Professor at Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany Christoph Emanuel Müller, Lecturer for quantitative methods of social research and data analysis, Center for Evaluation, Germany. P. Linh Nguyen, Independent evaluator, Vietnam Pablo Rodriguez-Bilella, Professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina Marco Segone, Director, Independent Evaluation Office at UN Women, Italy. Stefan Silvestrini, CEO of CEval GmbH, Germany. David Rider Smith, Current Chair of OECD DAC Evaluation Network Task Group on Evaluation Capacity Development, UK.  Reinhard Stockmann, Professor of Sociology, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany Sabrina Storm, Senior Advisor at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Germany. Susan D. Tamondong, Post Graduate in Social Policy from the University of Oxford, UK.  Nermine Wally, founding member for the Egyptian Evaluation Network and the Middle East and North Africa Evaluation Network Yimin Yuan, Vice President of Jiangsu Agency for Educational Evaluation, China.