Zeitschrift für Evaluation: Issue 2/2026, 25. Volume

To date, from an international comparative perspective, very little is known about the institutionalization of evaluation. The CEval Evaluation GLOBE project therefore analyzed 50 countries across all continents using a uniform theoretical and methodological framework. The results, to which 137 authors contributed, have been published in four volumes of case studies (Stockmann et al., 2020, 2022, 2023, 2026). The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the key findings from the research proj-ect launched in 2016. In doing so, it seeks to enhance understanding of how evaluation has been institutionalized across different countries and world regions, as well as to identify the key drivers and barriers shaping these institutionalization processes. While there are significant differences between African, American, Asia-Pacific, and European countries, several common patterns hold across all cases: Evaluation is policy-driven in all countries without exception, the political system determines the demand and the topics of evaluation; evaluation in the social system is at a very early stage and Civil Society Organizations are not a driving force for evalu-ation; the professionalization of evaluation is relatively independent of the political and social system which are considered the main potential sources of demand for evaluation. Challenges to the institutionalization and use of evaluation include the understanding of governance among political and administrative decision-makers, the development of national legal frameworks and policies, the creation of organizational implementation structures, the perception of evaluation as a form of control, processes of routinization and bureaucratization, quality deficiencies of all kinds, and governance structures. Correlation analyses suggest that there is a causal relationship between ‘good governance’ and evaluation.

Keywords
institutionalization of evaluation, evaluation use, political system, governance, civil society, professionalisation