Mauro Palumbo

The evaluation of Structural Funds in Italy has supported both the diffusion of evaluation activities and the use of structured evaluation strategies and methodologies. MEANS’ Guides published in 1999 contributed to open the discussion upon some key points of evaluation practice: the link with the role of rationality in decision processes, the priority of accountability or learning aims of evaluation (and the consistency of the two in everyday practice), the importance of participated evaluation and its applicability in complex programs as those supported by Structural Funds’. The importance given to monitoring and mid-term evaluation has maybe weakened the attention paid to the implementation process, while the direct link of evaluation to results has sometimes produced a «objectives- results» approach, not much inclined to «open the black box» of the programs and see how they really works and how they are improvable. Also for these reasons the contribution of sociology to the evaluation activities has been wrongly considered a marginal one: on the contrary, in a globalised society social research used in evaluation is very important to develop the awareness of how public policies really works and to help citizens’ empowerment. In this way, social research helps also citizens, stakeholders and decision makers to assume right choices.