Evaluation January 2002 [antikvár]

Evaluation Copyright 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) [ 1356-3890 (200101) 8:1; 4; 023930] Vol 8(1): 4 Editor's Foreword This is the third special issue of the journal Evaluation devoted to the proceedings of a conference of the European Evaluation Society. It is based on the conference that took place in Lausanne, Switzerland in October 2000. These conferences, which occur every two years, bring together scholars and practitioners from the European Union, eastern and central Europe as weil as from the evaluation community worldwide. The 2000 conference, for the first time, included a significant group of North American evaluators. The opening piece by Frans Leeuw, who was president of the Society at the time of the conference, sums up many of the themes and challenges that the conference addressed. The overall theme of the conference was 'Taking Evaluation to the People', a recognition of the growing importance of civil society as weil as the public sector in the world of evaluation in Europe today. Several of the pieces in this issue address concerns about democracy, decentralization and equity. But the issue alsó contains articles that address other methodological and managerial preoccupations among European evaluators, especially the use of indicators in public management and how to demonstrate and compare the performance of policies in different regions and states. This special issue is published somé nine months before the 2002 conference of the European Evaluation Society that will take place in October 2002 in Seville, Spain. Hopefully the content of this issue will encourage scholars, practitioners and policy makers to come to the ancient city of Seville and carry forward the discussions that took place in Lausanne and which this issue documents. Elliot Stern The Tavistock Institute