IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v61y2023i4p951-969.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seeking Legitimacy Through Knowledge Production: The Politics of Monitoring and Evaluation of the EU Trust Fund for Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Natalie Welfens
  • Saskia Bonjour

Abstract

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is a form of expert knowledge that is central to migration governance. This article analyses M&E of the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), created in 2015 to ‘fight the root causes of migration’. Combining institutionalist accounts with practice theory, we examine whether M&E knowledge production served the instrumental purpose of assessing policy impact or mainly legitimated particular policy actors and positions. We find that M&E did not produce evidence on whether the EUTF met its objectives. However, in the context of the EU's multiple crises, M&E knowledge production served to seek legitimacy not only for the EUTF, but also for the further fusion of development and migration policies, and for the EU as a competent and transparent actor. Our analysis highlights that knowledge use and knowledge production are connected, and that M&E knowledge politics allow for the legitimation of both actors and policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Natalie Welfens & Saskia Bonjour, 2023. "Seeking Legitimacy Through Knowledge Production: The Politics of Monitoring and Evaluation of the EU Trust Fund for Africa," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 951-969, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:61:y:2023:i:4:p:951-969
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13434
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13434
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.13434?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arne Niemann & Natascha Zaun, 2018. "EU Refugee Policies and Politics in Times of Crisis: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 3-22, January.
    2. Christine Hackenesch & Julian Bergmann & Jan Orbie, 2021. "Development Policy under Fire? The Politicization of European External Relations," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 3-19, January.
    3. Violeta Moreno†Lax, 2018. "The EU Humanitarian Border and the Securitization of Human Rights: The ‘Rescue†Through†Interdiction/Rescue†Without†Protection’ Paradigm," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 119-140, January.
    4. Henk van Houtum & Rodrigo Bueno Lacy, 2020. "The migration map trap. On the invasion arrows in the cartography of migration," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 196-219, March.
    5. Lene Hansen & Michael C. Williams, 1999. "The Myths of Europe: Legitimacy, Community and the ‘Crisis’ of the EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 233-249, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alpes, Maybritt Jill, 2024. "Smuggling critique into impact: Research design principles for critical and actionable migration research," SocArXiv mzy8h, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Youngs & Özge Zihnioğlu, 2021. "EU Aid Policy in the Middle East and North Africa: Politicization and its Limits," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 126-142, January.
    2. Nathan Lauwers & Jan Orbie & Sarah Delputte, 2021. "The Politicization of the Migration–Development Nexus: Parliamentary Discourse on the European Union Trust Fund on Migration," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 72-90, January.
    3. Christoffer Kølvraa, 2016. "European Fantasies: On the EU's Political Myths and the Affective Potential of Utopian Imaginaries for European Identity," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(1), pages 169-184, January.
    4. Christine Hackenesch & Julian Bergmann & Jan Orbie, 2021. "Development Policy under Fire? The Politicization of European External Relations," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 3-19, January.
    5. Bartek Pytlas, 2021. "Hijacking Europe: Counter‐European Strategies and Radical Right Mainstreaming during the Humanitarian Crisis Debate 2015–16," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 335-353, March.
    6. Aline Burni & Benedikt Erforth & Ina Friesen & Christine Hackenesch & Maximilian Hoegl & Niels Keijzer, 2022. "Who Called Team Europe? The European Union’s Development Policy Response During the First Wave of COVID-19," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(1), pages 524-539, February.
    7. Thilo Bodenstein & Mark Furness, 2023. "European aid to the MENA region after the Arab uprisings: A window of opportunity missed," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2023-48, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Didier Bigo & Elspeth Guild, 2019. "International Law and European Migration Policy: Where Is the Terrorism Risk?," Laws, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-18, November.
    9. Iliana Olivié & María Santillán O’Shea, 2024. "Influencing Aid Policy: Perceptions of How Member States Shape EU Development Cooperation," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(5), pages 1074-1092, October.
    10. Muhammad Ali Asadullah, 2019. "Quadratic Indirect Effect of National TVET Expenditure on Economic Growth Through Social Inclusion Indicators," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, March.
    11. Jan Orbie & Viktor Opsomer & Yentyl Williams & Sarah Delputte & Joren Verschaeve, 2021. "Shielded against risk? European donor co‐ordination in Palestine," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(5), pages 703-720, September.
    12. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:48:y:2010:i::p:1-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Anne-Marie Jeannet & Tobias Heidland & Martin Ruhs, 2021. "What asylum and refugee policies do Europeans want? Evidence from a cross-national conjoint experiment," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 353-376, September.
    14. Athina Economou & Christos Kollias, 2024. "The 2015 Refugee Crisis and Institutional Trust in European Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 173(2), pages 377-396, June.
    15. Artur Gruszczak, 2021. "“Refugees” as a Misnomer: The Parochial Politics and Official Discourse of the Visegrad Four," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(4), pages 174-184.
    16. ÄŠetta Mainwaring & Daniela DeBono, 2021. "Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(5), pages 1030-1048, August.
    17. Gerasimos Tsourapas & Sotirios Zartaloudis, 2022. "Leveraging the European Refugee Crisis: Forced Displacement and Bargaining in Greece's Bailout Negotiations," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 245-263, March.
    18. Caterina Molinari, 2022. "The Borders of the Law: Legal Fictions, Elusive Borders, Migrants’ Rights," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 239-245.
    19. Friedrich Plank & Niels Keijzer & Arne Niemann, 2021. "Outside‐in Politicization of EU–Western Africa Relations: What Role for Civil Society Organizations?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 161-179, January.
    20. Sandra Eckert, 2021. "The European Green Deal and the EU's Regulatory Power in Times of Crisis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(S1), pages 81-91, September.
    21. Natalia Chaban & Ole Elgström, 2021. "Politicization of EU Development Policy: The Role of EU External Perceptions (Case of Ukraine)," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 143-160, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:61:y:2023:i:4:p:951-969. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.