Towards a postpositivist approach to policy evaluation?

The normative ideal which currently governs policy evaluation has been outdated by the changing nature of demands on the evaluation process. For the small group of social scientists reviewed here, the growing complexity of policy evaluation demands that it take into account the normative dimensions of public policy. This approach remains in its infancy and much more work needs to be done on assessing the capacity of existing evaluation strategies to include these normative dimensions. At present the brightest promise for postpositivist policy evaluation is its ability to inform a new generation of evaluators about the politically contentious nature of such evaluation. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.