Strategic and Responsive Tools for Evaluation

To move toward strategic and responsive evaluation, we require tools that help us clarify and evaluate the theories of change underlying, and the actions envisaged in, the design for peacebuilding. We must find a way to move from rather abstract ideas to concrete points of inquiry.

A first tool is simply to map the biggest picture possible. Here we consider the cyclical, context-episodic nature of protracted conflict and peacebuilding. We must attach evaluative work to the realities faced by peacebuilding initiatives in protracted conflicts, recognizing that the initiatives are aimed at change that will take place over years, maybe decades, but that the peacebuilding activities must respond to the immediate context and episodes that emerge from day to day. Within the big picture, we can now begin to add the specific tools for integrating the strategic and responsive components of evaluation. I suggest that these tools can take the form of six sets of inquiry that are interdependent and circular in their relationship, which are here provided in a working format.