Evaluation: Discursive practice or communicative action?
Public trust in expert analysis is at all-time low. Vivid claims unconstrained by fact checking dominate public policy. In this operating environment is evaluation obsolete? To help rebut this proposition, this article examines the relationship between information, knowledge, and politics through two contrasting philosophical lenses. First, Michel Foucault’s discursive practice model: rather than pursuing truth, power is intent to capture evaluation, shape knowledge and engage in linguistic opportunism to enhance its authority to monitor, sanction and punish. Jurgen Habermas’ communicative action approach is the antidote to this state of affairs: it challenges the power structure, celebrates democratic deliberation, promotes evaluation independence and highlights ethical concerns and the public interest.