The Political Consequences of Evaluation Systems – The Case of an Evidence-based Employment Policy

The last couple of decades has seen an increasing institutionalisation and systematisation of evaluation activities within the public sector. This has sparked an increasing scholarly interest in the proliferation of Evaluation Systems and their consequences on the policies and practices of modern welfare states (Leeuw & Furubo 2008). Parallel to this, we have witnessed a burgeoning literature concerned with the instrumental use (or lack thereof) of evidence-based knowledge in the development of welfare policies or services and how this is feasibly and/or desirable. The paper seeks to broaden both of these research agendas by proposing a novel approach to studying evidence-based policymaking that goes beyond the instrumental use of the individual evidence-based evaluations. Drawing on the concepts of Evaluation Systems (Leuw & Furebo 2008) and constitutive effects (Dahler-Larsen 2012), it is argued that evidence-based knowledge affects policy through its inscription in Evaluation Systems structuring the procedures and norms of the policymaking process. This paper seeks to understand the political consequences of such Evidence-based Evaluation Systems by investigating the use of evidence-based knowledge in the Danish Employment Policy. The paper investigates recent changes in the management and organization of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) in Denmark. It is shown how the use of evidence-based knowledge functions as an Evaluation System inscribed in the work of policy-commissions, ministerial practices, processes of budgeting and other procedures for designing new policy-initiatives. Furthermore, the paper critically analyses the policymaking process of a recent Employment Reform in order to show how the institutionalization of an Evidence-Based Evaluation System structures the understanding of both the goals, target groups and measures of employment policies. Based on these findings, the paper argues that the institutionalization of Evaluation Systems holds some inherent dangers of reductionism, which potentially can distort and constrain democratic deliberation. Evaluation Systems are not merely a way of improving the instrumental use of evaluative information in the policymaking process, but are also a way of governing these processes.