Rethinking Public Policy Evaluation in the Global South: Colonial Legacies, Governance Challenges, and Future Pathways

A Technical Audit of Contextual Frameworks and Emerging Pathways

Introduction: Why the Global South Needs a Dedicated Evaluation Lens

In 2022, the Global South Evaluation Conference convened at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, bringing together over 50 evaluation experts from 35 countries (Source: Conference documentation). The gathering signaled a growing recognition that evaluation models developed in Northern, industrialized contexts are insufficient for the institutional, political, and economic realities of the Global South. On 17 June 2025, Anis Ben Brik (ORCID 0000-0002-5409-4693) published a foundational chapter in the Handbook of Public Policy Evaluation in the Global South (Edward Elgar Publishing) that provides the empirical and theoretical scaffolding for this recognition (Source 1: Ben Brik, 2025).

The core thesis emerging from both the conference and the chapter is unambiguous: evaluation is not a neutral technocratic tool. It is shaped by colonial administrative legacies, governance structures ranging from nascent democracies to authoritarian regimes, and persistent socio-economic constraints. These factors demand context-specific frameworks that move beyond the importation of Western indicators and accountability mechanisms. This article conducts a systematic audit of these hidden logics, drawing on the chapter’s evidence and supplementary scholarship (Dados & Connell, Rigg, Fukuda-Parr, Kusek & Rist, Pawson & Tilley, Schwartz) to assess current practice and propose future-oriented pathways.

Colonial Legacies and the Hidden Logic of Evaluation Design

The administrative traditions inherited from colonial powers—British, French, Portuguese, and others—continue to shape institutional capacity, data collection norms, and accountability mechanisms in many Global South countries. Ben Brik’s chapter explicitly links these legacies to current governance hurdles, citing Dados & Connell’s work on post-colonial development trajectories and Rigg’s analysis of Southeast Asian policy environments (Source 1). The persistence of centralized statistical systems, hierarchical reporting structures, and a culture of compliance over learning can be traced directly to colonial administrative codes.

A critical phenomenon identified is “evaluation importation”: the replication of Western indicators—such as randomized controlled trials or Results-Based Management frameworks—without adaptation to local knowledge systems, power dynamics, or data infrastructure. This importation often serves donor requirements rather than domestic learning needs. For instance, the use of standardized poverty metrics may obscure localized definitions of well-being that rely on kinship networks or communal land tenure. The consequence is a dual system: formal evaluations that satisfy international reporting obligations, and informal, tacit knowledge systems that remain invisible to policy feedback loops.

Empirical evidence from the chapter indicates that countries with stronger post-colonial state-building efforts (e.g., Botswana, Costa Rica) have developed more hybrid evaluation cultures, blending imported methodologies with indigenous participatory approaches. In contrast, states with fragmented or contested state authority (e.g., Somalia, Afghanistan) exhibit evaluation vacuums where external actors dominate assessment agendas.

Navigating Diverse Political Landscapes: From Nascent Democracies to Authoritarian Regimes

The political landscape of the Global South spans fragile states, stable authoritarian regimes, hybrid systems, and emerging democracies. Each context generates different incentives for transparency, participation, and learning. Ben Brik’s chapter draws on political economy analysis, referencing Fukuda-Parr’s work on the politics of human development indices and Kusek & Rist’s framework for evaluation in governance reform programs (Source 1). The central insight: evaluation findings are politically consequential, and their use or suppression reflects who benefits from the status quo.

In authoritarian regimes, evaluation units may exist but operate under tight control. Findings that expose program failure or corruption can be classified, de-prioritized, or selectively released to bolster regime narratives. The case of China’s environmental policy evaluations illustrates this dynamic: internal audits drive regulatory changes, but data on pollution deaths remain opaque. In contrast, nascent democracies like Ghana or Senegal have opened evaluation findings to parliamentary oversight and civil society, though capacity constraints limit systematic use.

The chapter also examines hybrid regimes—such as those in Rwanda or Ethiopia—where developmental states deploy evaluation strategically to demonstrate performance to international donors while restricting independent scrutiny. The role of civil society is critical: in pluralistic settings, evaluation can fuel genuine reform through public pressure; in settings with weak civil society, it can be co-opted by ruling elites as a legitimation device (Source 1, citing Pawson & Tilley’s realist evaluation approach). This variation underscores that institutional development must be sequenced alongside political liberalization for evaluation to function as a learning mechanism rather than a performative tool.

Economic and Social Challenges: The Real-World Constraints

Chronic resource constraints, informal economies, weak data infrastructure, and high inequality fundamentally shape evaluation practice in the Global South. Ben Brik’s chapter identifies these as persistent structural barriers that no methodological innovation can fully circumvent. For example, household surveys in low-income countries suffer from high non-response rates in conflict zones, while administrative data in fragile states may be fabricated at the local level to meet fiscal transfer targets.

Social challenges compound these issues. Ethnic fractionalization, gender disparities, and linguistic diversity affect who is consulted and whose knowledge counts. Evaluation designs that do not account for these power asymmetries risk reproducing marginalization. The chapter references Schwartz’s work on evaluation in conflict-affected environments, noting that traditional quasi-experimental designs are often infeasible when baseline data are absent and treatment assignment is non-random due to political exigencies.

Economic constraints further limit evaluation frequency and depth. Many Global South governments allocate less than 0.1% of program budgets to evaluation, compared to 1-3% in OECD countries (Source: World Bank evaluation capacity assessments). This leads to a reliance on donor-funded evaluations that follow external agendas rather than domestic priorities. The result is a fragmented evaluation landscape where learning is episodic and non-cumulative.

Theoretical Frameworks for a Contextualized Practice

To navigate these complexities, Ben Brik’s chapter introduces a multi-theoretical toolkit. Political economy analysis examines the distribution of power and resources that shapes who commissions evaluations, who controls data, and who can act on findings. Institutional analysis—drawing on public administration scholarship—assesses the formal rules and informal norms that govern evaluation units, their independence, and their connections to decision-makers. Future studies theories, particularly scenario planning, offer a forward-looking methodology for evaluation under deep uncertainty.

Scenario planning, as articulated by Schwartz, allows evaluators to test program theories against multiple plausible futures, thereby identifying robust strategies and vulnerable assumptions. This approach is especially relevant for Global South contexts where volatility—climate shocks, commodity price swings, political instability—makes linear prediction unreliable. By incorporating foresight into evaluation design, practitioners can transform evaluation from an after-the-fact accountability exercise into a strategic tool for adaptive management (Source 1).

The chapter also integrates realist evaluation (Pawson & Tilley), which emphasizes understanding the mechanisms and contexts that produce outcomes, rather than merely measuring effect sizes. This aligns with the need to localize evaluation theory: what works in one institutional context may fail in another due to differing political cultures, bureaucratic capacities, and social norms.

Future Pathways: From Technocratic Exercise to Strategic Lever

The evidence from the 2022 conference and Ben Brik’s chapter points to a necessary paradigm shift. Evaluation in the Global South cannot remain a compliance-driven, donor-mandated activity. Instead, it must become a strategic lever for sustainable development—embedded in domestic governance systems, aligned with local knowledge, and equipped with methods that address uncertainty.

Three pathways emerge:

• Institutional hybridization: Building evaluation units that are formally independent but politically savvy, capable of navigating both donor demands and domestic power structures. This requires investment in local evaluation professionals, peer networks, and South-South knowledge exchange.
• Methodological pluralism: Expanding the toolkit beyond experimental designs to include realist evaluation, contribution analysis, and scenario planning. These methods better accommodate the complexity and unpredictability of Global South contexts.
• Data sovereignty reforms: Strengthening national statistical systems while ensuring that evaluation data are owned and controlled by domestic actors, not external funders. This includes investing in citizen-generated data and participatory monitoring.

The chapter predicts that countries which successfully integrate these pathways will develop more resilient policy systems capable of learning from both successes and failures. Those that continue to rely on imported templates risk perpetuating the colonial legacy of evaluation as an external audit rather than an internal learning process.

Industry implications are clear: international development agencies must shift from prescribing evaluation methods to supporting contextual adaptation. Academic institutions in the Global South should prioritize curriculum development that combines local case studies with rigorous theory. The next phase of evaluation capacity building must treat context not as a variable to be controlled, but as the fundamental architecture within which all evaluation operates.