Exploring the Missing Links between Cause and Effect

Abstract

Programme evaluation has become a widely applied mode of systematic inquiry for making judgements about public policies. Although evaluation, as a form of systematic inquiry, has provided feedback information for policy makers, it still too often produces banal answers to complex and multi-dimensional societal problems. In this article, we take a close look at the ontological premises, conceptions of causality, and relationships to rational theories of action of different programme evaluation paradigms. There is a paradigm crisis in evaluation resulting from differences over assumptions about causality. Evaluation paradigms clearly provide research strategies, but more particularly they map causal links in contrasting ways. Traditional cause-and-effect logic disregards the fact that programme effects are always brought about by real actors rather than constructed ideal actors. A new interpretation of causes and effects is needed, which would strengthen the core ideas that lie behind the now widely applied and consolidated realistic evaluation tradition.