From disenchantment to renewal

Evaluation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Robert Picciotto

Evaluation as a free-standing discipline arose out of the ashes of World War II, a time of optimism, when government turned to the academy to guide public policy. The evaluation pioneers shared a bracing vision: a search for truth in the public interest. Seventy years later the glitter has faded, and disenchantment has taken hold. Evaluation, a quintessential public good, has become a market good, and eminent evaluation thinkers are asking the same questions about evaluation that they have been routinely asking of others—with sobering results. Yet, countervailing currents and turbulent streams lie just below the surface. Once a tipping point is reached, a new wave of evaluation diffusion will begin to curl. What might it look like?

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (01) ◽  
pp. 187-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura M. Weinrib

Drawing on John Witt's 2007 book, Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law, this essay explores the role of the interwar civil liberties movement in rehabilitating the discourse of rights and privatizing the American welfare state. In the years after World War I, most proponents of free speech were hostile to Lochner‐era legalism and preferred to pursue civil liberties through legislative and regulatory measures as a means of advancing the public interest. By the onset of World War II, however, they had instead adopted a court‐centered strategy that emphasized individual autonomy. The popular and political resonance of their new state‐skeptical vocabulary suggests that post‐New Deal liberalism in America was a hybrid of classical and Progressive approaches.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.


Author(s):  
Joia S. Mukherjee

This chapter outlines the historical roots of health inequities. It focuses on the African continent, where life expectancy is the shortest and health systems are weakest. The chapter describes the impoverishment of countries by colonial powers, the development of the global human rights framework in the post-World War II era, the impact of the Cold War on African liberation struggles, and the challenges faced by newly liberated African governments to deliver health care through the public sector. The influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s neoliberal economic policies is also discussed. The chapter highlights the shift from the aspiration of “health for all” voiced at the Alma Ata Conference on Primary Health Care in 1978, to the more narrowly defined “selective primary health care.” Finally, the chapter explains the challenges inherent in financing health in impoverished countries and how user fees became standard practice.


Author(s):  
Christina Joy Ditmore ◽  
Angela K. Miller

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the concept through which travelers plan, book, and pay for public or private transport on a single platform using either a service or subscription-based model. Observations of current projects identified two distinct approaches to enabling MaaS: the private-sector approach defined as a “business model,” and the public sector approach that manifests as an “operating model.” The distinction between these models is significant. MaaS provides a unique opportunity for the public sector to set and achieve public policy goals by leveraging emerging technologies in favor of the public good. Common policy goals that relate to transportation include equity and access considerations, environmental impact, congestion mitigation, and so forth. Strategies to address these policy goals include behavioral incentivization and infrastructure reallocation. This study substantiates two models for implementing MaaS and expanding on the public sector approach, to enable policy in favor of the public good.


1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-466
Author(s):  
Norman C. Thomas

By most assessments, Jimmy Carter's presidency was a failure. The popular image of Carter is that of a president who was politically naive, an inept manager, a well-meaning but nettlesome scold, and an unsuccessful leader. According to two recent scholarly evaluations, Carter was an ineffective leader who ranks in the bottom quintile of the thirty-nine presidents who have preceded George Bush.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-487
Author(s):  
John A. Askin ◽  
Kurt Glaser

IN SPITE of a short period of sovereignty— less than 7 years—the State of Israel is playing an important role in matters pertaining not only to the Middle East but, in some respects, in matters of importance to the whole world. In medicine the advances in Israel have been no less striking than the progress made in other fields. It is felt that the pediatricians of our country might be interested to learn about Israel's medical status, particularly pertaining to pediatrics. Palestine, of which the present Israel is a part, was in Old Testament times known as Canaan or Philistia because of the tribes which lived there. Palestine was the home of the Jewish people from the time Joshua conquered the land, about 1400 B.C., until the Romans destroyed the Jewish State in the year 70 A.D. Around 630 A.D. the country came under Moslem power. From 1516 to the end of World War I Palestine was a part of the Turkish Empire. In 1917, the British Government issued the famous Balfour Declaration which promised the Jews of the world that they could build a national homeland in Palestine. The League of Nations made the land a British mandate in 1920. From then until World War II Palestine was at several occasions plunged into violent civil war between the Jews and the Arabs. After World War II in 1947 Great Britain announced a decision to give up the Mandate.


Author(s):  
Dr Rose Fazli ◽  
Dr Anahita Seifi

The present article is an attempt to offer the concept of political development from a novel perspective and perceive the Afghan Women image in accordance with the aforementioned viewpoint. To do so, first many efforts have been made to elucidate the author’s outlook as it contrasts with the classic stance of the concept of power and political development by reviewing the literature in development and particularly political development during the previous decades. For example Post-World War II approaches to political development which consider political development, from the Hobbesian perspective toward power, as one of the functions of government. However in a different view of power, political development found another place when it has been understood via postmodern approaches, it means power in a network of relationships, not limited to the one-way relationship between ruler and obedient. Therefore newer concept and forces find their way on political development likewise “image” as a considerable social, political and cultural concept and women as the new force. Then, the meaning of “image” as a symbolic one portraying the common universal aspect is explained. The Afghan woman image emphasizing the historic period of 2001 till now is scrutinized both formally and informally and finally the relationship between this reproduced image of Afghan women and Afghanistan political development from a novel perspective of understanding is represented.


Author(s):  
Karsten Vrangbæk

Scandinavian health systems have traditionally been portrayed as relatively similar examples of decentralised, public integrated health systems. However, recent decades have seen significant public policy developments in the region that should lead us to modify our understanding. Several dimensions are important for understanding such developments. First, several of the countries have undergone structural reforms creating larger governance units and strengthening the state level capacity to regulate professionals and steer developments at the regional and municipal levels. Secondly, the three Nordic countries studied experienced an increase in the purchase of voluntary health insurance and the use of private providers. This introduces several issues for the equality of users and the efficiency of the system. This paper will investigate such trends and address the question: Is the Nordic health system model changing, and what are the consequences for trust, professional regulation and the public interest?


1975 ◽  
Vol 157 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Throne

Studies by investigators at the University of Iowa Child Welfare Station before World War II demonstrated that the intelligence levels of the mentally retarded could be raised, often up to and beyond normalcy (IQ 100). Yet, the implications were never seriously followed up on anything approaching a broad-gauged scale. The juridical climate now supports the position that, because the evidence is that all the retarded can learn under proper conditions, they are all entitled to public schooling. It is suggested that the public schools may soon be confronted with an even more far-reaching educo-legal thrust based on the kind of evidence first reported by the Iowa investigators; that is, the public schools have a responsibility not only to educate or train the retarded to achieve their retarded potentialities, but to increase those potentialities, i.e., raise their intelligence levels.


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